Oblomov. By Goncharov, Ivan Aleksandrovich, 1812-1891. Translated
from the Russian by C. J. Hogarth. Notes by translator. Reprint of the
1915 ed. published by Macmillan, New York. ISBN 0-8376-0451-6.
(Robert Bentley, Cambridge, Mass.) First published in Russian 1858.
First published in English 1915. Library of Congress Cataloging in
Publication Data: PZ3.G5875Ob 1979 [PG3337.G6] 891.7'3'3 79-19061.
This file is an ASCII (text) version with some Latin 1 accented
characters. Italics and footnote superscripts have been omitted.
The em dash has been rendered by two minus signs without spaces.
Oblomov
By Ivan Goncharov
(1858)
Part 1 Chapter 1
ONE morning, in a flat in one of the great buildings in Gorokhovaia
Street, the population of which was sufficient to constitute that of a
provincial town, there was lying in bed a gentleman named Ilya Ilyitch
Oblomov. He was a fellow of a little over thirty, of medium height,
and of pleasant exterior. Unfortunately, in his dark-grey eyes there
was an absence of any definite idea, and in his other features a total
lack of concentration. Suddenly a thought would wander across his
face with the freedom of a bird, flutter for a moment in his eyes,
settle on his half-opened lips, and remain momentarily lurking in the
lines of his forehead. Then it would disappear, and once more his
face would glow with a radiant insouciance which extended even to his
attitude and the folds of his night-robe. At other times his glance
would darken as with weariness or ennui. Yet neither the one nor the
other expression could altogether banish from his countenance that
gentleness which was the ruling, the fundamental, characteristic, not
only of his features, but also of the spirit which lay beneath them.
That spirit shone in his eyes, in his smile, and in his every movement
of hand and head. On glancing casually at Oblomov a cold, a
superficially observant person would have said, "Evidently he is
good-natured, but a simpleton"; whereas a person of greater
penetration and sympathy than the first would have prolonged his
glance, and then gone on his way thoughtfully, and with a smile as
though he were pleased with something.
Oblomov's face was neither reddy nor dull nor pale, but of an
indefinite hue. At all events, that was the impression which it
gave--possibly because, through insufficiency of exercise, or through
want of fresh air, or through a lack of both, he was wrinkled beyond
his years. In general, to judge from the extreme whiteness of his
bare neck, his small, puffy hands, and his soft shoulders, one would
conclude that he possessed an effeminate body. Even when excited, his
actions were governed by an unvarying gentleness, added to a lassitude
that was not devoid of a certain peculiar grace. On the other hand,
should depression of spirits show itself in his face, his glance would
grow dull, and his brow furrowed, as doubt, despondency, and
apprehension fell to contending with one another. Yet this crisis of
emotion seldom crystallized into the form of a definite idea--still
less into that of a fixed resolve. Almost always such emotion
evaporated in a sigh, and shaded off into a sort of apathetic
lethargy.
Oblomov's indoor costume corresponded exactly with the quiet outlines
of his face and the effeminacy of his form. The costume in question
consisted of a dressing-gown of some Persian material--a real Eastern
dressing-gown--a garment that was devoid both of tassels and velvet
facings and a waist, yet so roomy that Oblomov might have wrapped
himself in it once or twice over. Also, in accordance with the
immutable custom of Asia, its sleeves widened steadily from knuckles
to shoulder. True, it was a dressing-gown which had lost its pristine
freshness, and had, in places, exchanged its natural, original sheen
for one acquired by hard wear; yet still it retained both the clarity
of its Oriental colouring and the soundness of its texture. In
Oblomov's eyes it was a garment possessed of a myriad invaluable
qualities, for it was so soft and pliable that, when wearing it, the
body was unaware of its presence, and, like an obedient slave, it
answered even to the slightest movement. Neither waistcoat nor cravat
did Oblomov wear when indoors, since he loved freedom and space. For
the same reason his slippers were long, soft, and broad, to the end
that, whenever he lowered his legs from the bed to the floor without
looking at what he was doing, his feet might fit into the slippers at
once.
With Oblomov, lying in bed was neither a necessity (as in the case of
an invalid or of a man who stands badly in need of sleep) nor an
accident (as in the case of a man who is feeling worn out) nor a
gratification (as in the case of a man who is purely lazy). Rather,
it represented his normal condition. Whenever he was at home--and
almost always he was at home--he would spend his time in lying on his
back. Likewise he used but the one room--which was combined to serve
both as bedroom, as study, and as reception-room--in which we have
just discovered him. True, two other rooms lay at his disposal, but
seldom did he look into them save on mornings (which did not comprise
by any means every morning) when his old valet happened to be sweeping
out the study. The furniture in them stood perennially covered over,
and never were the blinds drawn up.
At first sight the room in which Oblomov was lying was a well-fitted
one. In it there stood a writing-table of redwood, a couple of sofas,
upholstered in some silken material, and a handsome screen that was
embroidered with birds and fruits unknown to Nature. Also the room
contained silken curtains, a few mats, some pictures, bronzes, and
pieces of china, and a multitude of other pretty trifles. Yet even
the most cursory glance from the experienced eye of a man of taste
would have detected no more than a tendency to observe les convenances
while escaping their actual observance. Without doubt that was all
that Oblomov had thought of when furnishing his study. Taste of a
really refined nature would never have remained satisfied with such
ponderous, ungainly redwood chairs, with such rickety whatnots.
Moreover, the back of one of the sofas had sagged, and, here and
there, the wood had come away from the glue. Much the same thing was
to be seen in the case of the pictures, the vases, and certain other
trifles of the apartment. Nevertheless, its master was accustomed to
regard its appurtenances with the cold, detached eye of one who would
ask, "Who has dared to bring this stuff here?" The same indifference
on his part, added to, perhaps, an even greater indifference on the
part of his servant, Zakhar, caused the study, when contemplated with
attention, to strike the beholder with an impression of all-prevailing
carelessness and neglect. On the walls and around the pictures there
hung cobwebs coated with dust; the mirrors, instead of reflecting,
would more usefully have served as tablets for recording memoranda;
every mat was freely spotted with stains; on the sofa there lay a
forgotten towel, and on the table (as on most mornings) a plate, a
salt-cellar, a half-eaten crust of bread, and some scattered
crumbs--all of which had failed to be cleared away after last night's
supper. Indeed, were it not for the plate, for a recently smoked pipe
that was propped against the bed, and for the recumbent form of
Oblomov himself, one might have imagined that the place contained not
a single living soul, so dusty and discoloured did everything look,
and so lacking were any active traces of the presence of a human
being. True, on the whatnots there were two or three open books,
while a newspaper was tossing about, and the bureau bore on its top an
inkstand and a few pens; but the pages at which the books were lying
open were covered with dust and beginning to turn yellow (thus proving
that they had long been tossed aside), the date of the newspaper
belonged to the previous year, and from the inkstand, whenever a pen
happened to be dipped therein, there arose, with a frightened buzz,
only a derelict fly.
On this particular morning Oblomov had (contrary to his usual custom)
awakened at the early hour of eight. Somehow he looked perturbed;
anxiety, regret, and vexation kept chasing one another across his
features. Evidently he had fallen a prey to some inward struggle, and
had not yet been able to summon his wits to the rescue. The fact of
the matter was that, overnight, he had received from the starosta of
his country estate an exceedingly unpleasant letter. We all know what
disagreeable things a starosta can say in his letters--how he can tell
of bad harvests, of arrears of debt, of diminished incomes, and so
forth; and though this particular official had been inditing precisely
similar epistles during the past three years, his latest communication
had affected its recipient as powerfully as though Oblomov had
received an unlooked-for blow. Yet, to do Oblomov justice, he had
always bestowed a certain care upon his affairs. Indeed, no sooner
had he received the starosta's first disturbing letter (he had done so
three years ago) than he had set about devising a plan for changing
and improving the administration of his property. Yet to this day the
plan in question remained not fully thought out, although long ago he
had recognized the necessity of doing something actually decisive.
Consequently, on awakening, he resolved to rise, to perform his
ablutions, and, his tea consumed, to consider matters, to jot down a
few notes, and, in general, to tackle the affair properly. Yet for
another half-hour he lay prone under the torture of this resolve;
until eventually he decided that such tackling could best be done
after tea, and that, as usual, he would drink that tea in bed--the
more so since a recumbent position could not prove a hindrance to
thought.
Therefore he did as he had decided; and when the tea had been consumed
he raised himself upon his elbow and arrived within an ace of getting
out of bed. In fact, glancing at his slippers, he even began to
extend a foot in their direction, but presently withdrew it.
Half-past ten struck, and Oblomov gave himself a shake. "What is the
matter?," he said vexedly. " In all conscience 'tis time that I
were doing something! Would I could make up my mind to--to--" He
broke off with a shout of "Zahkar!" whereupon there entered an elderly
man in a grey suit and brass buttons--a man who sported beneath a
perfectly bald pate a pair of long, bushy, grizzled whiskers that
would have sufficed to fit out three ordinary men with beards. His
clothes, it is true, were cut according to a country pattern, but he
cherished them as a faint reminder of his former livery, as the one
surviving token of the dignity of the house of Oblomov. The house of
Oblomov was one which had once been wealthy and distinguished, but
which, of late years, had undergone impoverishment and diminution,
until finally it had become lost among a crowd of noble houses of more
recent creation.
For a few moments Oblomov remained too plunged in thought to notice
Zakhar's presence; but at length the valet coughed.
"What do you want?" Oblomov inquired.
"You called me just now, barin?"
"I called you, you say? Well, I cannot remember why I did so. Return
to your room until I have remembered."
Zakhar retired, and Oblomov spent another quarter of an hour in
thinking over the accursed letter.
"I have lain here long enough," at last he said to himself. "Really,
I must rise. . . . But suppose I were to read the letter through
carefully and then to rise? Zakhar!"
Zakhar re-entered, and Oblomov straightway sank into a reverie. For a
minute or two the valet stood eyeing his master with covert
resentment. Then he moved towards the door.
"Why are you going away?" Oblomov asked suddenly.
"Because, barin, you have nothing to say to me. Why should I stand
here for nothing?"
"What? Have your legs become so shrunken that you cannot stand for a
moment or two? I am worried about something, so you must wait. You
have just been lying down in your room haven't you? Please search for
the letter which arrived from the starosta last night. What have you
done with it?"
"What letter? I have seen no letter," asserted Zakhar.
"But you took it from the postman yourself?"
"Maybe I did, but how am I to know where you have since placed it?"
The valet fussed about among the papers and other things on the table.
"You never know anything," remarked his master. "Look in that basket
there. Or possibly the letter has fallen behind the sofa? By the
way, the back of that sofa has not yet been mended. Tell the joiner
to come at once. It was you that broke the thing, yet you never give
it a thought!"
"I did not break it," retorted Zakhar. "It broke of itself. It
couldn't have lasted for ever. It was bound to crack some day."
This was a point which Oblomov did not care to contest. " Have you
found the letter yet?" he asked.
"Yes--several letters." But they are not what I want."
"I can see no others," asserted Zakhar.
"Very well," was Oblomov's impatient reply. "I will get up and search
for the letter myself."
Zakhar retired to his room again, but had scarcely rested his hands
against his pallet before stretching himself out, when once more there
came a peremptory shout of "Zahar! Zakhar!"
"Good Lord!" grumbled the valet as a third time he made for the study.
"Why should I be tormented in this fashion? I would rather be dead!"
"My handkerchief!" cried Oblomov. "Yes, and very quickly, too! You
might have guessed that that is what I am wanting."
Zakhar displayed no particular surprise or offence at this reproachful
command. Probably he thought both the command and the reproach
natural.
"Who knows where the handkerchief is?" he muttered as he made a tour
of the room and felt each chair (although he could not but have
perceived that on them there was nothing whatsoever lying). "You lose
everything," he added, opening the door into the parlour in order to
see whether the handkerchief might not be lurking there.
"Where are you going?" exclaimed Oblomov. "'Tis here you must search.
I have not been into those other rooms since the year before last. Be
quick, will you?"
"I see no handkerchief," said Zakhar, spreading out his hands and
peering into every corner. "There it is!" suddenly he croaked. "'Tis
just underneath you. I can see its end sticking out. You have been
lying on it all the time, yet you actually ask me to find it!" He
hobbled away without waiting for an answer. For a moment or two
Oblomov was taken aback, but soon found another means of putting his
valet in the wrong.
"A nice way to do your cleaning!" he said. "What a lot of dust and
dirt, to be sure! Look at those corners! You never bestir yourself
at all."
"If I never bestir myself," retorted Zakhar offendedly, "at least I do
my best, and don't spare myself, for I dust and sweep almost every
day. Everything looks clean and bright enough for a wedding."
"What a lie!" cried Oblomov. "Be off to your room again!"
That he had provoked Zakhar to engage in this conversation was a fact
which gave him small pleasure. The truth was he had forgotten that,
once a delicate subject is touched upon, one cannot well avoid a fuss.
Though he wished his rooms to be kept clean, he wished this task to be
carried out invisibly, and apart from himself; whereas, whenever
Zakhar was called upon to do even the least sweeping or dusting, he
made a grievance of it.
After Zakhar had retired to his den Oblomov relapsed into thought,
until, a few minutes later, the clock sounded a half-hour of some
sort.
"What is that?" cried Oblomov in horror. "Soon the time will be
eleven, yet I am not yet up and washed! Zakhar! Zakhar!"
Zakhar reappeared.
"Are my washing things ready?" his master inquired.
"Yes, they have been ready a long time. Why do you not get up?"
"And why didn't you tell me that the things are ready? Had you done
that, I should have risen long ago. Go along, and I will follow you;
but at the moment I must sit down and write a letter."
Zakhar left the room. Presently he reappeared with a
much-bescribbled, greasy account-book and a bundle of papers.
"If you are going to write anything," he said, "perhaps you would like
to check these accounts at the same time? Some money is due to be
paid out."
"What accounts? What money?" inquired Oblomov petulantly.
"The accounts sent in by the butcher, the greengrocer, the laundress,
and the baker. All are wanting their money."
"Always money and worry!" grumbled Oblomov. "Why do you not give me
the accounts at intervals instead of in a batch like this?"
"Because each time you have sent me away, and then put matters off
until the morrow."
"Well, these accounts can wait until the morrow."
"No, they cannot, for the creditors are pressing, and say they are
going to allow you nothing more on credit. To-day is the first of the
month, you must remember."
"Ah! Fresh cares, fresh worries!" cried Oblomov gloomily. "Why are
you standing there? Lay the table, and I will rise, wash, and look
into the whole business. Is the water yet ready?"
"Quite."
Oblomov raised himself and grunted as though he really intended to get
out of bed.
"By the way," said Zakhar, "whilst you were still asleep the manager
of the building sent the dvornik to say that soon you must quit the
flat, since he wants it for some one else."
"Very well, then. We must go. Why worry me about it? This is the
third time you have done so."
"But they keep worrying me about it."
"Then tell them that we intend to go."
Zakhar departed again, and Oblomov resumed his reverie. How long he
would have remained in this state of indecision it is impossible to
say had not a ring at the doorbell resounded through the hall.
"Some one has called, yet I am not yet up!" exclaimed Oblomov as he
slipped into his dressing-gown. "Who can it be?"
Lying down again, he gazed curiously towards the door.
[Gorokhoviaia Street:] One of the principal streets of Petrograd.
[starosta:] Overseer or steward.
[barin:] "Master" or "sir."
[dvornik:] Porter or doorkeeper.
Part 1 Chapter 2
THERE entered a young fellow of about twenty-five. Beaming with
health and irreproachably dressed to a degree which dazzled the eye
with its immaculateness of linen and gorgeousness of jewellery, he was
a figure calculated to excite envy.
"Good morning, Volkov!"cried Oblomov. "And good morning to you,"
returned the radiant gentleman, approaching the bed and looking about
him for a spot whereon to deposit a hat. However, perceiving only
dust, he retained his headgear in his hand. Next he drew aside the
skirts of his coat (preparatory to sitting down), but a hasty
inspection of the nearest chair convinced him that he had far better
remain standing.
"So you are not yet up?" he went on. "And why on earth are you
wearing a nightshirt? They have quite gone out of fashion."
"'Tis not a nightshirt, it is a dressing-gown," said Oblomov, nestling
lovingly into the ample folds of the garment. "Where are you from?"
"From the tailor's. Do you think this frock-coat a nice one?" And he
turned himself round and round for Oblomov's inspection.
"Splendid! Made with excellent taste!" was the verdict. "Only why is
it so broad behind?"
"The better to ride in it. It is a riding-coat. I ordered it for
to-day for the reason that this is the first of May and I am to go to
the Ekaterinhov with Gorunov. He has just got his promotion, and we
intend to cut a dash on the strength of it. He has a roan horse--all
the horses in his regiment are roans--and I a black. How are you
going--in a carriage or on foot?"
"By neither method," replied Oblomov.
"What? To-day is the first of May, and you are not going to the
Ekaterinhov? Why, every one will be there!"
"Not quite every one," Oblomov lazily remarked.
"You must go, though. Sophia Nikolaevna and Lydia will be occupying
two of the seats in our carriage, but the seat facing them will be
vacant. Come with us, I tell you."
"No, I do not intend to occupy the vacant seat. What sort of a figure
should I cut on it?"
"Then, if you like, Mischa Gorunov shall lend you a horse."
"Of what is the fellow thinking?" said Oblomov as though to himself.
"How come you and the Gorunov family to be so friendly with one
another?"
"Give me your word of honour not to repeat what I may tell you, and I
will explain."
"Herewith I give it."
"Very well. I am in love with Lydia."
"Splendid! Have you been in love with her long? She seems a charming
girl."
"I have been in love with her for three weeks," said Volkov, with a
sigh. "And Mischa, for his part, is in love with Dashenka."
"Who is Dashenka?"
"What! You do not know Dashenka? Why, the whole town is raving over
her dancing. To-night I am going to the Opera with Mischa, and he is
to throw her a bouquet. Well, I must be off to buy the necessary
camelias for it."
"Come back, then, and take lunch with me. I should like to have a
talk with you, for I have just experienced two misfortunes."
"Impossible, I fear, for I am lunching with Prince Tiumenev. All the
Gorunovs--yes, and Lydia, too--are to be there. What a cheerful house
it is! And so is Tiumenev's country place. I have heard that it is
to be the scene of numberless dances and tableaux this summer. Are
you likely to be one of the guests?"
"No--I think not."
"What hospitality the Prince dispenses! This winter his guests
averaged fifty, and sometimes a hundred."
"How wearisome the whole thing must have been!"
"What! Wearisome? Why, the more the merrier. Lydia, too, used to be
there--though in those days I never so much as noticed her. In fact,
never once did I do so until one day I found myself vainly trying to
forget her, vainly pitting reason in the lists with love.'" Volkov
hummed the concluding words, and seated himself carelessly upon a
chair. Almost instantly he leaped to his feet again, and brushed the
dust from his trousers.
"What quantities of dirt you keep everywhere!" he remarked.
"'Tis Zakhar's fault, not mine," replied Oblomov.
"Well, now I must be off, as it is absolutely necessary that I should
buy those camelias for Mischa's bouquet. Au revoir!"
"Come and have tea after the opera, and tell me all about it."
No, that is impossible, for I am promised to supper at the Musinskis'.
It is their reception day, you know. However, meet me there, and I'll
present you."
"What is toward at the Musinskis'?"
"What, indeed? Why, entertainment in a house where you hear all the
news."
"Like everything else, it would bore me."
"Then go and call upon the Mezdrovs, where the talk centres upon one
topic, and one topic alone--the arts. Of nothing else will you hear
but the Venetian School, Beethoven, Bach, Leonardo da Vinci, and so
forth."
"All of them boring subjects!" said Oblomov with a yawn. "What a lot
of pedants the Mezdrovs must be! Do you never get tired of running
about from house to house?"
"Tired? Why should I? Every morning I like to go out and learn the
news (thank God, my official duties never require my actual presence,
save twice a week, when they consist of lunching with and doing the
civil to the General). After that I proceed to call upon any people
upon whom I have not called for a long while. Next there will be some
new actress--whether at the Russian theatre or at the French.
Besides, always there is the Opera, to which I am a subscriber.
Furthermore, I am in love, and Mischa is about to enjoy a month's
leave from his regiment, and the summer is on the point of beginning,
and Mischa and I intend to retire to his country house for a change of
air. We shall have plenty of sport there, since he possesses
excellent neighbours and they give bals champêtres. Also I shall be
able to escort Lydia for walks through the woods, and to row her about
in a boat, and to pluck flowers for her benefit. At the present
moment I must leave you. Good-bye!"
Rising, he endeavoured to look at himself in a dust-coated mirror;
after which he departed--though returning once more to show his friend
the newest thing in Parisian gloves and an Easter card which Prince
Tiumenev had recently sent him.
"What a life!" thought Oblomov, with a shrug of his shoulders. "What
good can a man get out of it? It is merely a squandering and a
wasting of his all. Of course, an occasional look into a theatre is
not a bad thing, nor is being in love--for Lydia is a delightful girl,
and pursuits like plucking flowers with her and rowing her about in a
boat even I should enjoy; but to have to be in ten different places
every day, as Volkov has--!"
He turned over on his back and congratulated himself that he at least
cherished no vain social aspirations. 'Twas better to lie where he
was and to preserve both his nerves and his human dignity. . .
.
Another ring at the doorbell interrupted his reflections. This time
the visitor turned out to be a gentleman in a dark frock-coat with
crested buttons whose most prominent features were a clean-shaven
chin, a pair of black whiskers around a haggard (but quiet and
sensible) face, and a thoughtful smile.
"Good day, Sudbinski!" cried Oblomov cheerfully.
"Good day to you," replied the gentleman. "'Tis a long time since I
last saw you, but you know what this devilish Civil Service means.
Look at that bagful of reports which I have brought with me! And not
only that, but I have had to leave word at the office that a messenger
will find me here should I be wanted. Never do I get a single moment
to myself."
"So you were on the way to your office? How come you to be going so
late? Your usual hour used to be nine."
"Yes, it used to be nine, but now I go at twelve."
"Ah, I see: you have recently been made the head of a department.
Since when?"
"Since Easter," replied Sudbinski, with a meaning nod. "But what a
lot of work! It is terrible! From eight to twelve in the morning I
am slaving at home; from twelve to five at the Chancellory; and all
the evening at home again. I have quite lost touch with my
acquaintances."
"Come and lunch with me to-day, and we will drink to your promotion,"
said Oblomov.
"No, to-day I am lunching with the Vice-Director, as well as have a
report to prepare by Thursday. You see, one cannot rely upon
provincial advices, but must verify every return personally. Are you
going to the Ekaterinhov to-day?"
"No, for I am not very well," replied Oblomov, knitting his brows.
"Moreover, like yourself, I have some work to do."
"I am very sorry," said Sudbinski; "for it is a fine day, and the only
day on which I myself can hope for a little rest."
"And what news have you?" asked Oblomov.
"Oh, a good deal--of a sort. We are required no longer to write at
the end of our official letters 'Your humble servant,' but merely
'Accept the assurance of my profound respect.' Also we have been told
that we are to cease to make out formal documents in duplicate.
Likewise, our office has just been allotted three new tables and a
couple of confidential clerks. Lastly, the Commission has now
concluded its sittings. There's a budget of news for you!"
"And what of our old comrades?"
"Nothing at present, except that Svinkin has lost his case."
"And to think that you work from eight to twelve, and from twelve to
five, and again in the evening! Dear, dear!"
"Well, what should I do if I were not in the Service?" asked
Sudbinski.
"You would just read and write on your own account."
"But it is not given to every one to be a littérateur. For example,
you yourself write nothing."
"No, for I have some property on my hands," said Oblomov with a sigh.
"But I am working out a new system for it; I am going to introduce
reforms of various kinds. The affair worries me terribly."
"Well, for my part, I must work, in order to make a little money.
Besides, I am to be married this coming autumn."
"Indeed! And to whom?"
"To Mademoiselle Murashina. Do you remember their country villa, next
to mine? I think you came to tea with me and met her there?"
"No, I have no recollection of it. Is she pretty?
"Yes, charming. Suppose, one day, we go to lunch with her?"
Oblomov hesitated. "Very well," he said after a pause; "only--"
"What about next week?"
"Certainly. Next week let it be. But at the moment I have no
suitable clothes. . . . Is your fiancée a financial catch?"
"Yes, for her father is a State councillor, and intends to give her
ten thousand roubles, as well as to let us have half his official
house (a house of twelve rooms--the whole being furnished, heated, and
lighted at the public expense); so we ought to do very well. Herewith
I invite you to be my best man at the wedding."
Once more the doorbell rang.
"Good-bye," said Sudbinski. "I am annoyed that, as I surmise, I
should be wanted at the office."
"Then stay where you are," urged Oblomov. "I desire your advice, for
two misfortunes have just befallen me."
"No, no; I had better come and see you another day." And Sudbinski
took his leave.
"Plunged up to the ears in work, good friend!" thought Oblomov as he
watched him depart. "Yes, and blind and deaf and dumb to everything
else in the world! Yet by going into society and, at the same time,
busying yourself about your affairs you will yet win distinction and
promotion. Such is what they call 'a career'! Yet of how little use
is a man like that! His intellect, his will, his feelings--what do
they avail him? So many luxuries is what they are--nothing more.
Such an individual lives out his little span without achieving a
single thing worth mentioning; and meanwhile he works in an office
from morning till night--yes, from morning till night, poor wretch!"
Certainly a modicum of quiet satisfaction was to be derived from the
thought that from nine o'clock until three, and from eight o'clock
until nine on the following day, he, Oblomov, could remain lying prone
on a sofa instead of having to trot about with reports and to inscribe
multitudes of documents. Yes, he preferred, rather, leisure for the
indulgence of his feelings and imagination. Plunged in a
philosophical reverie, he overlooked the fact that by his bedside
there was standing a man whose lean, dark face was almost covered with
a pair of whiskers, a moustache, and an imperial. Also the
new-comer's dress was studied in its negligence.
"Good morning, Oblomov," he said.
"Good morning, Penkin," was the response. "I should like to show you
a letter which I have just received from my starosta. Whence have you
sprung?"
"From the newsagent's, near by. I went to see if the papers are yet
out. Have you read my latest article?"
"No."
"Then you ought to do so."
"What is it about?" Oblomov asked with a faint yawn.
"About trade, about the emancipation of women, about the beautiful
April days with which we have been favoured, and about the newly
formed fire-brigade. How come you not to have read that article? In
it you will see portrayed the whole of our daily life. Over and above
anything else, you will read therein an argument in favour of the
present realistic tendency in literature."
"And have you no other work on hand?" inquired Oblomov.
"Yes, a good deal. I write two newspaper articles a week, besides
reviewing a number of books. In addition, I have just finished a tale
of my own."
"What is it about?"
"It tells how, in a certain town, the governor used to beat the
citizens with his own hand."
"The realistic tendency, right enough!" commented Oblomov.
"Quite so," said the delighted litteérateur. "In my tale (which is
novel and daring in its idea) a traveller witnesses a beating of this
kind, seeks an interview with the governor of the province, and lays
before him a complaint. At once the said governor of the province
orders an official who happens to be proceeding to that town for the
purpose of conducting another investigation to inquire also into the
truth of the complaint just laid, and likewise to collect evidence as
to the character and behaviour of the local administrator. The
official in question calls together the local citizens, on the pretext
of a trade conference, and incidentally sounds them concerning the
other matter. And what do you suppose they do? They merely smile,
present their compliments, and load the governor of the town with
praises! Thereafter the official makes extraneous inquiries, and is
informed that the said citizens are rogues who trade in rotten
merchandise, give underweight, cheat the Treasury, and indulge in
wholesale immorality; wherefore the beatings have been a just
retribution."
"Then you intend the assaults committed by the governor to figure in
the story as the fatum of the old tragedians?"
"Quite so," said Penkin. "You have great quickness of apprehension,
and ought yourself to tackle the writing of stories. Yes, it has
always been my idea to expose the arbitrariness of our local
governors, the decline of morality among the masses, the faulty
organization existing among our subordinate officials, and the
necessity of drastic, but legal, measures to counterbalance these
evils. 'Tis a novel idea for a story, is it not?"
"Certainly; and to me who read so little a peculiarly novel one."
"True, I have never once seen you with a book in your hand.
Nevertheless, I beseech you to read a poem which, I may say, is
shortly to appear. It is called 'The Love of a Blackmailer for a
Fallen Woman.' The identity of the author I am not at liberty to
disclose--at all events yet."
"Pray give me an idea of this poem."
"It exposes, as you will see, the whole mechanism of the social
movement--but a mechanism that is painted only in poetic colours.
Each spring of that engine is touched upon, and each degree of the
social scale held up to the light. We see summoned to the bar, as it
were, a weak, but vicious, lord, with a swarm of blackmailers who are
engaged in cheating him. Also various categories of fallen women are
dissected--French women, German women, and others; the whole being
done with vivid and striking verisimilitude. Certain extracts from
the poem have come to my ears, and I may say that the author is a
great man--one hears in him the notes both of Dante and of
Shakespeare."
"And whence has he originated?" asked Oblomov, leaning forward in
astonishment; but Penkin, perceiving that he had now said too much,
merely repeated that Oblomov must read the poem, and judge for
himself. This Oblomov declined to do.
"Why?" asked Penkin. "The thing will make a great stir and be much
talked about."
"Very well: let people talk. 'Tis all some folks have to do. 'Tis
their métier."
"Nevertheless, read it yourself, for curiosity's sake."
"What have I not seen in books!" commented the other. "Surely folk
must write such things merely to amuse themselves?"
"Yes; even as I do. At the same time, what truth, what
verisimilitude, do you not find in books! How powerfully some of them
move one through the vivid portraiture which they contain! Whomsoever
these authors take--a tchinovnik, an officer, or a blackmailer--they
paint them as living creatures."
"But what have those authors to worry about, seeing that if, as you
say, one chooses to take a given model for amusement's sake, the
picture is sure to succeed? Yet no: real life is not to be described
like that. In a system of that kind there is no understanding or
sympathy, nor a particle of what we call humanity. 'Tis all
self-conceit--no more. Folk describe thieves and fallen women as
though they were apprehending them in the streets and taking them to
prison. Never in the tales of such writers is the note of 'hidden
tears' to be detected--only that of gross, manifest malice and love of
ridicule."
"And what more would you have? You yourself have said (and very aptly
so) that seething venom, a taste for bilious incitement to vice, and a
sneering contempt for the fallen are the only ingredients needed."
"No, not the only ones," said Oblomov, firing up. "Picture a thief or
a fallen woman or a cheated fool, if you like, but do not forget the
rest of mankind. What about humanity, pray? Writers like yourself
try to write only with the head. What? Do you suppose the intellect
can work separately from the heart? Why, the intellect needs love to
fertilize it. Rather, stretch out your hand to the fallen and raise
him, weep over him if he is lost beyond recall, but in no case make
sport of him, for he is one to whom there should be extended only
compassion. See in him yourself, and act accordingly. That done, I
will read you, and bow my head before you. But in the writings of the
school of which I have spoken, what art, what poetical colouring, are
you able to discover? Should you elect to paint debauchery and the
mire, at least do so without making any claim to poetry."
"What? You bid me depict nature--roses, nightingales, a winter's
morning, and all that sort of thing--when things like these are
seething and whirling around us? Nay, we need, rather, the bare
physiology of society. No longer are love songs required."
"Give me man, and man alone," said Oblomov. "And, having given me
him, do you try to love him."
"What? To love the usurer, the hypocrite, the peculating and stupid
official? Why should I do that? 'Tis evident you have had little
experience of literature! Such fellows want punishing--want turning
out of the civic circle and the community."
"Out of 'the civic circle and the community,' you say?" ejaculated
Oblomov with a gasp as he rose and stood before Penkin. "That is
tantamount to saying that once in that faulty vessel there dwelt the
supreme element--that, ruined though the man may be, he is still a
human being, as even are you and I. Turn him out, indeed! How are you
going to turn him out of the circle of humanity, out of the bosom of
Nature, out of the mercy of God?" Oblomov came near to shouting as he
said this, and his eyes were blazing.
"How excited you have grown!" said Penkin in astonishment; whereupon
even Oblomov realized that he had gone too far. He pulled himself up,
yawned slightly, and stretched himself out sluggishly upon the sofa.
For a while silence reigned.
"What kind of books do you mostly read?" inquired Penkin.
"Books of travel," replied Oblomov.
Again there was a silence.
"And will you read the poem when it has come out?" continued Penkin.
"If so, I will bring you a copy of it."
Oblomov shook his head.
"Nor my story?"
Oblomov signified assent.
"Very well, then. Now I must be off to press," continued Penkin. "Do
you know why I came to see you to-day? I came because I wanted to
propose to you a visit to the Ekaterinhov. I have a conveyance of my
own, and, inasmuch as, to-morrow, I must write an article on current
events, I thought we might jointly look over my notes on the subject,
and you might advise me as to any point omitted. We should enjoy the
expedition, I think. Let us go."
"No, I am not well," said Oblomov with a frown, covering himself with
the bed-clothes. "But you might come and lunch with me to-day, and
then talk. I have just experienced a couple of misfortunes."
"Ah! The whole of our staff is to lunch at St. George's, I fear, and
then to go on to the festival. Also, at night I have my article to
write, and the printer must receive the manuscript by daylight at the
latest. Good-bye!"
"At night I have my article to write," mused Oblomov after his
friend's departure. "Then when does he sleep? However, he is making
some five thousand roubles a year, so his work is so much bread and
butter to him. Yet to think of being continually engaged in writing,
in wasting one's intellect upon trifles, in changing one's opinions,
in offering one's brain and one's imagination for sale, in doing
violence to one's own nature, in giving way to ebullitions of
enthusiasm--and the whole without a single moment's rest, or the
calling of a single halt! Yes, to think of being forced to go on
writing, writing, like the wheel of a machine--writing to-morrow,
writing the day after, writing though the summer is approaching and
holidays keep passing one by! Does he never stop to draw breath, the
poor wretch?" Oblomov glanced at the table, where everything lay
undisturbed, and the ink had become dried up, and not a pen was to be
seen; and as he looked he rejoiced to think that he was lying there as
careless as a newborn baby--not worrying at all, nor seeking to offer
anything for sale.
"But what of the starosta's letter and the notice to quit?" Yes,
suddenly he had remembered these things; and once more he became
absorbed in thought.
Again the doorbell rang.
"Why is every one seeking me out to-day?" he wondered as he waited to
see who next should enter. This time the new-comer proved to be a man
of uncertain age--of the age when it is difficult to guess the exact
number of years. Also, he was neither handsome nor ugly, neither tall
nor short, neither fair nor dark. In short, he was a man whom Nature
had dowered with no sharp-cut, distinguishing features, whether good
or bad, mental or physical.
"Ha!" said Oblomov as he greeted him. "So it is you, Alexiev? Whence
are you come?"
"To tell the truth, I had not thought to call upon you to-day,"
replied the visitor, "but by chance I met Ovchinin, and he carried me
off to his quarters, whither I, in my turn, have now come to convey
you."
"To convey me to, to--?"
"To Ovchinin's. Already Alianov, Pchailo, and Kolimiagin are there."
"But why have they collected together? And what do they want with
me?"
"Ovchinin desires you to lunch with him, and then to accompany him and
the rest of us to the Ekaterinhov. Likewise he has instructed me to
warn you to hire a conveyance. Come, get up! 'Tis fully time you
were dressed."
"How am I to dress? I have not yet washed myself."
"Then do so at once."
With that Alexiev fell to pacing the room. Presently he halted before
a picture which he had seen a thousand times before; then he glanced
once or twice out of the window, took from a whatnot an article of
some sort, turned it over in his hands, looked at it from every point
of view, and replaced the same. That done, he resumed his pacing and
whistling--the whole being designed to avoid hindering Oblomov from
rising and performing his ablutions. Ten minutes passed.
"What is the matter with you?" asked Alexiev suddenly.
"What is the matter with me?"
"I mean, why are you still in bed?"
I cannot tell you. Is it really necessary that I should get up?"
"Of course it is necessary, for they are waiting for us. Besides, you
said that you would like to go."
"To go where? I have no such desire."
"Only this moment you said we would go and lunch at Ovchinin's, and
then proceed to the Ekaterinhov!"
"No, I cannot. It would mean my going out into the damp. Besides,
rain is coming on. The courtyard looks quite dark."
"As a matter of fact, not a single cloud is in the sky, and the
courtyard looks dark only because you never have your windows washed."
"Well, well!" said Oblomov. " By the way, have I yet told you of my
misfortunes--of the letter from my starosta, and of the notice given
me to quit this flat?"
"No," answered Alexiev. "What about the letter?
The document not being immediately forthcoming, Zakhar was summoned to
search for it; and after it had been discovered beneath the
counterpane Oblomov read it to his friend--though passing over certain
greetings, added to inquiries as to the recipient's health. The gist
of the epistle was that the bulk of the crops on Oblomov's estate were
likely to fail for want of rain.
"Never mind," said Alexiev. "One must never give way to despair."
"And what would you do in my place?"
"I should first of all consider matters. Never ought one to come to a
hasty decision."
Crumpling the letter in his hands, Oblomov leaned forward with his
elbows on his knees, and remained in that posture for a considerable
time--his brain flooded with disturbing reflections.
"I wish Schtoltz would come!" at length he remarked. "He has written
that he is about to do so, but God knows what has happened to him! He
could solve the situation."
Suddenly the doorbell rang with such vehemence that both men started,
and Zakhar came hurrying out of his pantry.
[Ekaterinhov:] A fashionable park in Petrograd.
[general:] In this case the term "General" denotes a civil grade
corresponding to the military rank of the same title.
[tchinovnik:] Government official.
[St. George's:] A smart restaurant in Petrograd.
Part 1 Chapter 3
THE next moment there entered the room a tall, loosely built man who
evidently did not believe in refinement of costume, nor was in any way
ashamed of the fact. This was Mikhei Andreievitch Tarantiev, a native
of the same district as Oblomov. Though an individual of rough,
sullen mien, and of rather an overbearing manner, he did not lack a
certain keen ruggedness of wit; nor could any one be a better judge of
mundane questions in general, nor a better resolver of tangled
juridical problems (though usually he behaved rudely to the person who
had sought his advice on these matters). Nevertheless, his abilities
stopped short at a talent for verbal exposition; and no sooner was he
called upon to transmit a theory into action than his whole bearing
underwent a change, and in every case he discovered practical
difficulties in the way of what he conceived to be the best course to
take.
"How are you?" he said brusquely as he extended a hairy hand. "What
do you mean by lying in bed like a log? Presently it will be twelve
o'clock, yet you are sprawling about on your back!" The other
forestalled him by hurriedly slipping his feet into his slippers, or
the new-comer would have pulled him out of bed.
"I was just about to rise," said Oblomov with a yawn.
"Yes; I know how you rise--how you go rolling about until lunch-time!
Zakhar, come and help your master to dress!"
Zakhar entered and glared at Tarantiev. Raising himself on his elbow,
Oblomov stepped from the bed like a man who is thoroughly worn out,
and, dropping into an arm-chair, sat there without moving. Meanwhile
Zakhar pomaded, parted, and combed his master's hair, and then asked
him if he desired to wash.
"Presently," said Oblomov. "Do you wait a little."
"Ah! So you are here?" said Tarantiev suddenly as he turned to
Alexiev. "I had not seen you. By the way, what a swine is that
kinsman of yours!"
"What kinsman?" inquired Alexiev with a stare. "I do not possess a
single relative."
"I mean Athanasiev. Surely he is a relative of yours? I know he is."
"My name is Alexiev, not Athanasiev," said the other. "And I repeat
that I do not possess a single relative."
"But he is just like you--an ugly man, as well as (like yourself,
again) a man of the name of Vassili Nikolaitch?"
"Nevertheless he is no kinsman of mine. Besides, my first names are
Ivan and Alexeitch."
"Well, he is exactly like you, and a swine besides. You can tell him
that when next you meet him."
"I neither possess his acquaintance nor have ever set eyes upon him,"
said Alexiev, opening his snuffbox.
"Give me a pinch," put in Tarantiev. "You use the plain stuff, and
not the French, do you? Why not use the French? Never have I seen a
swine like that relative of yours. On one occasion I borrowed of him
fifty roubles. That was two years ago. And fifty roubles are not a
very large sum, are they? They are a sum which he might well have
forgotten, mightn't he? Yes, he very well might. But as a matter of
fact, he remembered it. Not a month had passed before he took to
saying, whenever he met me: 'How about that debt?' I assure you I
found him a perfect nuisance! And only yesterday he walked into our
office, and said to me: 'I expect you have just received your salary,
and are therefore in a position to repay me?' Well, I handed him over
my salary, even though he had come there for the express purpose of
shaming me in public. I had much ado not to put him out of the door.
'Poor fellow, you need the money, I suppose?' As though I had not
needed it! Am I such a rich man that I should quietly let him pouch
fifty roubles? Oblomov, hand me a cigar."
"The cigars are in that box there," said Oblomov, pointing to a
whatnot. He was still posed in his usual lazy but becoming
attitude--he was still taking no notice whatever of what was being
done or said around him, but contemplating his small white hands.
"What a rubbishy weed!" Tarantiev remarked, after sending out a puff
of tobacco smoke and inhaling another.
"You have come too early in the morning," suggested Oblomov with a
yawn.
"Then I am boring you, am I?"
"No; I was merely making a remark. Usually you arrive at lunch-time,
but to-day you have come an hour beforehand."
"I have come an hour beforehand because I wish to find out what there
is likely to be to eat at dinner. As a rule you provide such rubbishy
stuff."
"You had better go into the kitchen and inquire."
Tarantiev departed for the purpose.
"We are to have beef and veal," he remarked, on returning. "Ah,
friend Oblomov, though a landowner, you haven't the smallest notion
how to live. Your ménage is the ménage of a tradesman. Have you
bought that Madeira yet?"
"I don't know," replied Oblomov, scarcely noticing what had been said.
"You had better inquire of Zakhar. At all events there will be some
sort of wine."
"What? The rubbishy old stuff which you bought of a German dealer?
You ought to go to the English Store for your wines."
"Very well. Please send to the Store for some."
"Money first, please!"
Oblomov fumbled in a cashbox, and produced therefrom a ten-rouble
note.
"Madeira costs seven roubles the bottle," he said. "Here are ten
roubles. You will be given change at the Store."
Tarantiev hastened to cram the note into his pocket.
"Likewise, do you feel like hiring a conveyance and going to the
Ekaterinhov to-day?" he inquired. "If so, you might take me with
you."
Oblomov shook his head.
"I have met with two misfortunes," he remarked. "In the first place,
I am to be turned out of this flat."
"Because you haven't paid your rent, I suppose?"
"No, that is not the reason. I always pay in advance. Tell me what
had better be done."
"Who made me your adviser? Do you think I give advice for nothing?
Ask him, rather"--and Tarantiev pointed to Alexiev--"or else that
kinsman of his."
"No, no. Tell me what I ought to do."
"I should advise you to move to another flat."
"I could have said that myself."
"To the flat of a friend of mine in the Veaborg Quarter," continued
Tarantiev.
"What? To a flat in the Veaborg Quarter? In winter the whole
district is overrun with wolves!"
"True, at times they come there from the Neva Islands, but my friend's
house has high walls to it, and, in addition, she and her family and a
bachelor brother are nice people, and not like that fellow over
there." He pointed to Alexiev.
"But what has all this to do with me?" said Oblomov irritably. "I
tell you I am not going to move there."
"You fool!" exclaimed Tarantiev. " In that house you would be much
quieter and more comfortable than you are here, and you would pay
less, and you would have larger quarters. Besides, it is a more
respectable place than this. Here one has to sit at a dirty table on
which the pepper-pot is empty, the vinegar bottle the same, the knives
are not clean, the tablecloth is falling to pieces, and dust, dust,
dust, lies everywhere. Give me my cab-fare, and I will go and secure
you the flat at once. Then you can move into it to-morrow." Tarantiev
started to leave the room.
"Stop, stop!" cried Oblomov. "I tell you I am not going to the
Veaborg Quarter. Pray exercise your wits in contriving how I may
remain where I am. Moreover, I have a still more important affair on
hand. That is to say, I have just received from my starosta a letter
concerning which I should be glad of your advice."
With that he searched for the document, found it after some
difficulty, and read it aloud.
"So you hear what the starosta says as to drought and a failure of the
crops? What ought I to do?"
"The prime necessity," replied Tarantiev, "is complete quiet for you.
That you would get at the house of the friend of whom I have just
spoken; and I could come to see you every day."
"Yes, yes," said Oblomov. "But what about this affair of the
starosta?"
"The starosta is lying. He is a thief and a rogue. Why, I know an
estate, only fifty versts from yours, where the harvest of last year
was so good that it cleared the owner completely of debt. That being
so, why have the crops on your estate threatened to fail? Clearly the
starosta is a robber. If I were there I'd teach him! Do you suppose
this letter to be a natural, an honest one? No, no more than we can
suppose that that sheep's head over there "--he pointed to Alexiev
again--"is capable of writing an honest letter, or his kinsman
either."
"Whom am I to appoint in the starosta's place?" asked Oblomov.
"Another man might prove even worse than he."
"You yourself had better go to the estate, and stay there for the
summer, and then move into my friend's house. I will see that her
rooms shall be ready for you--yes, I will see to it at once.
Personally, I should have sold that property of yours, and bought
another. Hand it over to me, and I will very soon make the folk there
aware that I am alive!"
The upshot of it was that Oblomov accorded a half-hearted consent to
Tarantiev's procuring him a new lodging, and also to his writing to
the governor of the district where his (Oblomov's) property was
situated. After that Tarantiev departed, stating that he would return
to dinner at five o'clock.
With Tarantiev's departure a calm of ten minutes reigned in the
apartment. Oblomov was feeling greatly upset, both by the starosta's
letter and by the prospect of the impending removal. Also, the
tumultuous Tarantiev had thoroughly tired him out.
"Why do you not sit down and write the letter?" asked Alexiev. "If
you wish I will clean the inkstand for you."
"Clean it, and the Lord bless you!" sighed Oblomov. "Let me write the
letter alone, and then you shall fair-copy it after dinner."
"Very well," replied Alexiev. " But now I must be off, or I shall be
delaying the Ekaterinhov party. Good-bye!"
Oblomov did not heed him, but, sinking back into a recumbent position
in the armchair, relapsed into a state of meditative lethargy.
[Veaborg Quarter:] The Veaborg Quarter is one of the most outlying
suburbs of Petrograd.
Part 1 Chapter 4
ZAKHAR, after closing the door successively behind Tarantiev and
Alexiev, stood expecting to receive a summons from his master,
inasmuch as he had overheard the fact that the latter had undertaken
to write a letter. But in Oblomov's study all remained silent as the
tomb. Zakhar peeped through the chink of the door, and perceived that
his master was lying prone on the sofa, with his head resting on the
palm of his hand. The valet entered the room.
"Why have you lain down again?" he asked.
"Do not disturb me: cannot you see that I am reading?" was Oblomov's
abrupt reply.
"Nay, but you ought to wash, and then to write that letter," urged
Zakhar, determined not to be shaken off.
"Yes, I suppose I ought. I will do so presently. Just now I am
engaged in thought."
As a matter of fact, he did read a page of the book which was lying
open--a page which had turned yellow with a month's exposure. That
done, he laid it down and yawned.
"How it all wearies me!" he whispered, stretching, and then drawing
up, his legs. Glancing at the ceiling as once more he relapsed into a
voluptuous state of coma, he said to himself with momentary sternness:
"No--business first." Then he rolled over, and clasped his hands
behind his head.
As he lay there he thought of his plans for improving his property.
Swiftly he passed in review certain grave and fundamental schemes
affecting his plough-land and its taxation; after which he elaborated
a new and stricter course to be taken against laziness and vagrancy on
the part of the peasantry, and then passed to sundry ideas for
ordering his own life in the country.
First of all, he became engrossed in a design for a new house.
Eagerly he lingered over a probable disposition of the rooms, and
fixed in his mind the dimensions of the dining-room and the
billiard-room, and determined which way the windows of his study must
face. Indeed, he even gave a thought to the furniture and to the
carpets. Next, he designed a wing for the building, calculated the
number of guests whom that wing would accommodate, and set aside
proper sites for the stables, the coachhouses, and the servants'
quarters. Finally he turned his attention to the garden. The old
lime and oak-trees should all be left as they were, but the
apple-trees and pear-trees should be done away with, and succeeded by
acacias. Also, he gave a moment's consideration to the idea of a
park, but, after calculating the cost of its upkeep, came to the
conclusion that such a luxury would prove too expensive--wherefore he
passed to the designing of orangeries and aviaries.
So vividly did these attractive visions of the future development of
his estate flit before his eyes that he came to fancy himself already
settled there, and engaged in witnessing the result of several years'
working of his schemes.
On a fair summer's evening he seemed to be sitting at a tea-table on
the terrace of Oblomovka--sitting under a canopy of leafy shade which
the sun was powerless to penetrate. From a long pipe in his hand he
was lazily inhaling smoke, and revelling both in the delightful view
which stretched beyond the circle of the trees and in the coolness and
the quiet of his surroundings. In the distance some fields were
turning to gold as the sun, setting behind a familiar birch-grove,
tinged to red the mirror-like surface of the lake. From the fields a
mist had risen, for the chill of evening was falling, and dusk
approaching apace. To his ears, at intervals, came the clatter of
peasantry as they returned homewards, and at the entrance gates the
servants of the establishment were sitting at ease, while from their
vicinity came the sound of echoing voices and laughter, the playing of
balalaiki, and the chattering of girls as they pursued the sport of
gorielki. Around him, also, his little ones were frisking--at times
climbing on to his knee and hanging about his neck; while behind the
samovar was seated the real ruler of all that his eyes were beholding
his divinity, a woman, his wife! . . . And in the dining-room--a
room at once elegant and simply appointed--a cheerful fire was
glowing, and Zakhar, now promoted to the dignity of a major-domo, and
adorned with whiskers turned wholly grey, was laying a large, round
table to a pleasant accompanying tinkle of crystal and silver as he
arranged, here a decanter and there a fork.
Presently the dreamer saw his wife and himself sit down to a bountiful
supper. Yes, and with them was Schtoltz, the comrade of his youth,
his unchanging friend, with other well-known faces. Lastly, he could
see the inmates of the house retiring to rest. . . .
Oblomov's features blushed with delight at the vision. So clear, so
vivid, so poetical was it all that for a moment he lay with his face
buried in the sofa cushions. Suddenly there had come upon him a dim
longing for love and quiet happiness; suddenly he had become athirst
for the fields and the hills of his native place, for his home, for a
wife, for children. . . .
After lying face downwards for a moment or two, he turned upon his
back. His features were alight with generous emotion, and for the
time being he was--happy.
Again the charming seductiveness of sleep-waking enfolded him in its
embrace. He pictured to himself a small colony of friends who should
come and settle in the villages and farms within a radius of fifteen
or twenty versts of his country house. Every day they should visit
one another's houses--whether to dine or to sup or to dance; until
everywhere around him he would be able to see only bright faces framed
in sunny days--faces which should be ever free of care and wrinkles,
and round, and merry, and ruddy, and double-chinned, and of unfailing
appetite. In all his neighbourhood there should be constant
summertide, constant gaiety, unfailing good fare, the joys of
perennial lassitude. . . .
"My God, my God!" he cried in the fullness of his delight: and with
that he awoke. Once more to his ears came the cries of hawkers in the
courtyard as they vended coal, sand, and potatoes; once more he could
hear some one begging for subscriptions to build a church; once more
from a neighbouring building which was in course of erection there
streamed a babel of workmen's shouts, mingled with the clatter of
tools.
"Ah!" he sighed with a sense of pain. "Such is real life! What
ugliness there is in the roar of the capital! When shall I attain the
life of paradise--the life for which I yearn? Shall I ever see my own
fields, my own forests? Would that at this moment I were lying on the
grass under a tree, and gazing upwards at the sun through the boughs,
and trying to count the birds which come and go over my head!"
But what about the plans for improving the estate? And what about the
starosta and the flat? Once again these things knocked at his memory.
"Yes, yes," he answered them. "Seichass--presently."
With that he rose to a sitting posture on the sofa, lowered his legs
to the level of his slippers, and slipped the latter on to his feet;
after which he sat still for a little while. At length he attained a
wholly erect posture, and remained meditating for a couple of minutes.
"Zakhar! Zakhar!" he shouted as he eyed the table and the inkstand.
" I want you to, to--" Further he failed to get, but mutely pointed to
the inkstand, and then relapsed into thought.
The doorbell rang, and a little man with a bald head entered.
"Hullo, doctor!" Oblomov exclaimed as he extended one hand towards his
guest, and with the other one drew forward a chair. "What chance
brings you here?"
"The chance that, since all of you decline to be ill, and never send
for me, I am forced to come of myself," replied the doctor jestingly.
"But no," he added, in a more serious tone. "The truth is, I had to
visit a neighbour of yours on the upper floor, and thought I might as
well take you on the way. How are you?"
Oblomov shook his head despondently. "Poorly, doctor," he said. " I
have just been thinking of consulting you. My stomach will scarcely
digest anything, there is a pain in the pit of it, and my breath comes
with difficulty."
"Give me your wrist," said the doctor. He closed his eyes and felt
the patient's pulse. "And have you a cough?" he inquired.
"Yes--at night-time, but more especially while I am at supper."
"Hm! And does your heart throb at all, or your head ache?" He then
added other questions, bowed his bald pate, and subsided into profound
meditation. At length he straightened himself with a jerk, and said
with an air of decision--"Two or three years more of this room, of
lying about, of eating rich, heavy foods, and you will have a stroke."
Oblomov started.
"Then what ought I to do, doctor? Tell me, for Heaven's sake!"
"Merely what other people do--namely, go abroad."
"Pardon me, doctor, but how am I to do that?"
"Why should you not? Does money prevent you, or what?"
"Yes, yes; money is the reason," replied Oblomov, gladly catching at
the excuse, which was the most natural one that could possibly have
been devised. "See here--just read what my starosta writes."
"Quite so, but that is no business of mine," said the doctor. "My
business is to inform you that you must change your mode of life, and
also your place of residence. You must have fresh air--you must have
something to do. Go to Kissingen or to Ems, and remain there during
June and July, whilst you drink the waters. Then go on to
Switzerland, or to the Tyrol, and partake of the local grape cure.
That you can do during September and October."
"Oh, the devil take the Tyrol!" murmured Oblomov under his breath.
"Next, transfer yourself to some dry place like Egypt, and put away
from you all cares and worries."
"Excellent!" said Oblomov. "I only wish that starostas' letters like
this one reached you!"
"Also you must do no thinking whatsoever."
"No thinking, you say?"
"Yes--you must impose upon the brain no exertion."
"But what about my plans for my estate? I am not a log, if you will
pardon my saying so."
"Oh, very well. I have merely been warning you. Likewise, you must
avoid emotion of every kind, for that sort of thing is sure to
militate against a successful cure. Try, rather, to divert yourself
with riding, with dancing, with moderate exercise in the open air, and
with pleasant conversation--more especially conversation with the
opposite sex. These things are designed to make your heart beat more
lightly, and to experience none but agreeable emotions. Again, you
must lay aside all reading and writing. Rent a villa which faces
south and lies embowered in flowers, and surround yourself also with
an atmosphere of music and women."
"And may I eat at all?"
"Yes, certainly; but avoid all animal and farinaceous food, as well as
anything which may be served cold. Eat only light soups and
vegetables. Even in this great care will need to be exercised, for
cholera, I may tell you, is about. Walk eight hours out of every
twenty-four; go in for shooting."
"Good Lord!" groaned Oblomov.
"Finally," concluded the doctor, "go to Paris for the winter, where,
surrounded by a whirlpool of gaiety, you will best be able to distract
your mind from your habitual brooding. Cultivate theatres, balls,
masquerades, the streets, society, friends, noise, and laughter."
"Anything else?" inquired Oblomov, with ill-concealed impatience. The
doctor reflected a moment.
"Yes; also get the benefit of sea air," he said. "Cross over to
England, or else go for a voyage to America."
With that he rose to take his leave. "Should you carry out these
instructions to the letter--" he began.
"Yes, yes. Of course I shall carry them out!" said Oblomov bitterly
as he accompanied the physician to the door.
The doctor having departed, Oblomov threw himself back into an
arm-chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and remained sitting in
an almost unthinking heap. Roused by Zakhar to consider once more the
question of changing his quarters, he engaged in a long and heated
conversation with the valet. Eventually he dismissed the man to his
den, but could not dismiss from his own mind certain comparisons which
Zakhar had drawn between his master's life and the life of ordinary
people. How strange that suddenly there should have dawned in him
thoughts concerning human fate and destiny! All at once he found his
mind drawing a parallel between that destiny and his own existence;
all at once questions of life arose before his vision, like owls in an
ancient ruin flushed from sleep by a stray ray of sunlight. Somehow
he felt pained and grieved at his arrested development, at the check
which had taken place in his moral growth, at the weight which
appeared to be pressing upon his every faculty. Also gnawing at his
heart there was a sense of envy that others should be living a life so
full and free, while all the time the narrow, pitiful little pathway
of his own existence was being blocked by a great boulder. And in his
hesitating soul there arose a torturing consciousness that many sides
of his nature had never yet been stirred, that others had never even
been touched, and that not one of them had attained complete
formation. Yet with this there went an aching suspicion that, buried
in his being, as in a tomb, there still remained a moribund element of
sweetness and light, and that it was an element which, though hidden
in his personality, as a nugget lies lurking in the bowels of the
earth, might once have become minted into sterling coin. But the
treasure was now overlaid with rubbish--was now thickly littered over
with dust. 'Twas as though some one had stolen from him, and
besmirched, the store of gifts with which life and the world had
dowered him; so that always he would be prevented from entering life's
field and sailing across it with the aid of intellect and of will.
Yes, at the very start a secret enemy had laid a heavy hand upon him
and diverted him from the road of human destiny. And now he seemed to
be powerless to leave the swamps and wilds in favour of that road.
All around him was a forest, and ever the recesses of his soul were
growing dimmer and darker, and the path more and more tangled, while
the consciousness of his condition kept awaking within him less and
less frequently--to arouse only for a fleeting moment his slumbering
faculties. Brain and volition alike had become paralysed, and, to all
appearances, irrevocably--the events of his life had become whittled
down to microscopical proportions. Yet even with them he was
powerless to cope--he was powerless to pass from one of them to
another. Consequently they bandied him to and fro like the waves of
the ocean. Never was he able to oppose to any event elasticity of
will; never was he able to conceive, as the result of any event, a
reasoned-out impulse. Yet to confess this, even to himself, always
cost him a bitter pang: his fruitless regrets for lost opportunities,
coupled with burning reproaches of conscience, always pricked him like
needles, and led him to strive to put away such reproaches and to
discover a scapegoat. . . .
Once again Oblomov sank asleep; and as he slept he dreamed of a
different period, of different people, of a different place from the
present. Let us follow him thither.
[balalaiki:] Three-stringed, lute-like instruments.
[gorielki:] A sort of catch-as-catch-can.
[samovar:] Tea-urn.
Part 1 Chapter 5
WE find ourselves transported to a land where neither sea nor
mountains nor crags nor precipices nor lonely forests exist--where, in
short, there exists nothing grand or wild or immense.
Of what advantage, indeed, is the grand, the immense? The ocean
depresses the soul of man, and at the sight of its boundless expanse
of billows--an expanse whereon the weary eye is allowed no
resting-place from the uniformity of the picture--the heart of man
grows troubled within him, and he derives no solace from the roaring
and mad rolling of the waves. Ever since the world began, those waves
have sung the same dim, enigmatical song. Ever since the world began,
they have voiced but the querulous lament of a monster which,
everlastingly doomed to torment, utters a chorus of shrill, malicious
cries. On the shores of the sea no bird warbles; only the silent
gulls, like lost spirits, flit wearily along its margin, or circle
over its surface. In the presence of that turmoil of nature the roar
even of the wildest beast sounds weak, and the voice of man becomes
wholly overwhelmed. Yes, beside it man's form looks so small and
fragile that it is swallowed up amid the myriad details of the
gigantic picture. That alone may be why contemplation of the ocean
depresses man's soul. During periods, also, of calm and immobility
his spirit derives no comfort from the spectacle; for in the scarcely
perceptible oscillation of the watery mass he sees ever the
slumbering, incomprehensible force which, until recently, has been
mocking his proud will and, as it were, submerging his boldest
schemes, his most dearly cherished labours and endeavours.
In the same way, mountains and gorges were not created to afford man
encouragement, inasmuch as, with their terrible, menacing aspect, they
seem to him the fangs and talons of some gigantic wild beast--of a
beast which is reaching forth in an effort to devour him. Too vividly
they remind him of his own frail build; too painfully they cause him
to go in fear for his life. And over the summits of those crags and
precipices the heavens look so remote and unattainable that they seem
to have become removed out of the ken of humanity.
Not so that peaceful corner of the earth upon which our hero, in his
slumber, opened his eyes. There, on the contrary, the heavens seemed
to hug the earth--not in order that they might the better aim their
thunderbolts, but in order that they might the closer enfold it in a
loving embrace. In fact, they hovered low in order that, like a
sheltering, paternal roof, they might guard this chosen corner of the
earth from every adversity. Meanwhile the sun shone warm and bright
during half the year, and, withdrawing, did so so slowly and
reluctantly that it seemed ever to be turning back for one more look
at the beloved spot, as though wishing to give it one more bright,
warm day before the approaching weather of autumn. Also the hills of
that spot were no more than reduced models of the terrible mountains
which, in other localities, rear themselves to aff right the
imagination. Rather, they resembled the gentle slopes down which one
may roll in sport, or where one may sit and gaze dreamily at the
declining sun. Below them, toying and frisking, ran a stream. In one
place it discharged itself into a broad pool, in another it hurried
along in a narrow thread, in a third it slackened its pace to a sudden
mood of reverie, and, barely gliding over the stones, threw out on
either side small rivulets whereof the gentle burbling seemed to
invite sleep. Everywhere the vicinity of this corner of the earth
presented a series of landscape studies and cheerful, smiling vistas.
The sandy, shelving bank of the stream, a small copse which descended
from the summit of that bank to the water, a winding ravine of which
the depths were penetrated by a rill, a plantation of birch-trees--all
these things seemed purposely to be fitted into one another, and to
have been drawn by the hand of a master. Both the troubled heart and
the heart which has never known care might have yearned to hide
themselves in this forgotten corner of the world, and to live its life
of ineffable happiness. Everything promised a quiet existence which
should last until the grey hairs were come, and thereafter a death so
gradual as almost to resemble the approach of sleep.
There the yearly round fulfils itself in a regular, serene order. As
the calendar ordains, spring comes in in March, when turbid rivulets
begin to run from the hills, and the earth, thawing, steams with tepid
vapour. Then the peasant, doffing his sheepskin, goes out in
shirtsleeves alone, and shades his eyes with his hand as gladly he
shrugs his shoulders and drinks his fill of the gleaming sunlight.
Then, with a shaft in either hand, he draws forth the cart which has
been lying, bottom upwards, under the tiltshed, or examines and sounds
with his foot the plough which has been reposing in the penthouse.
All this is in preparation for the usual routine of toil, since in
that region spring sees no return of sudden snowstorms to heap the
fields and crack the branches. On the other hand, Winter, like a
cold, unapproachable beauty, retains her character until the lawful
season of thaw has arrived. Never does she mock one with unexpected
softenings of the air; never does she triple-harness the earth with
unheard-of degrees of frost. Everything proceeds according to
rote--according to a generally prescribed order of nature. Although,
in November, there begin snow and frost which, towards the festival of
Epiphany, increase to the point of freezing to an icicle the beard of
the peasant who has stepped out of his hut for a breath of fresh air,
the sensitive nose can, by February, detect the kindly odour of
approaching spring.
Next, the summer is peculiarly ravishing. Only in that particular
spot can one find that fresh, dry perfume which is the scent neither
of laurel nor of lemon, but of mingled wormwood, pine, and
cherry-blossom. Only there, also, can one find those bright days when
the sun's rays are warm, but never scorching, and the sky remains
cloudless for three months on end. As the bright days draw on they
lengthen, week by week; and during that period the evenings are hot
and the nights stifling, while the stars twinkle in the heavens with
the welcoming mien of friends. And when rain at length arrives, how
beneficent is its coming! Boisterously, richly, merrily it spates
forth, like the large, hot tears of a man unexpectedly relieved of
care; and as soon as ever it has passed the sun appears with a new
smile of love, to dry the fields and the hillocks, and to cause all
the countryside to assume an answering smile of delight. How gladly,
too, the peasant greets the rain!"The good rain washes us, and the sun
will dry us again," is his saying as he exposes his face to the tepid
downpour and lets it play upon his shoulders and back. Moreover, in
that region thunder is never terrible, but, rather, benevolent, and
always occurs at one particular season (generally on Saint Elias' Day,
in order that the people's established tradition may be fulfilled).
Also it would appear that, every year, both the number and the
intensity of the peals remain the sameÄas though for each year the
heavenly treasury had allotted a given measure of electricity. But of
terrible and destructive storms that country can show no record.
Nor has the country whereof I am speaking ever been visited with the
Egyptian or other plagues. Never has any member of its population
beheld a dire manifestation of Heaven, nor a thunderbolt, nor an
unlooked-for darkness; nor do venomous vermin abide there, and the
locust comes. not thither, and lions, tigers, bears, and wolves are
unknown (owing to the fact that the country contains no fastnesses for
them to dwell in). In short, over the fields and around the village
wander only lowing cattle, bleating sheep, and cackling poultry.
Yet none but God knows whether a poet or a visionary would find
himself satisfied with the natural features of this peaceful spot.
Such gentlemen, we know, love to gaze upon the moon, and to listen to
the strains of nightingales; they love to see Luna clothe herself in
coquettish, aureate cloud, and then glide mysteriously through the
boughs of trees, and send forth clusters of silver beams to delight
the eyes of her worshippers. But in this country of Oblomov's dream
no one knows such a moon; there Luna's features, as she looks down
upon the villages and the fields, resembles, rather, a polished,
cheery copper basin, and in vain would the poet fasten ravished eyes
upon her, for she would return his gaze with the same indifference as
that with which a round-faced rustic beauty meets the eloquent,
passionate glances of a town gallant.
Nor has a nightingale ever been heard in that country--perchance for
the reason that the region contains no shaded arbours or gardens of
roses. But what an abundance of quails it can show!--so much so that
in summer, when the harvest is in course of being gathered, urchins
can catch them even in their hands! Yet it must not be supposed that
thereafter the quails furnish a gastronomic dainty. Such an outrage
would be repugnant to the moral sense of the inhabitants, since the
quail is a bird, and therefore legally prohibited from being used for
food. Consequently it lives but to delight the popular ear with its
song, and in almost every house there hangs beneath the eaves a wicker
cage wherein a member of that feathered species sits penned.
Even the general aspect of this modest, unaffected spot would fail to
please the poet or the visionary. Never would it be theirs to behold
a scene in which all nature--woodland, lake, cotter's hut, and sandy
hillside--is burning with a purplish glow, while sharply defined
against a purple background may be seen, moving along a sandy, winding
road, a cavalcade of countrymen in attendance upon some great lady who
is journeying towards a ruined castle--a castle where they will find
awaiting them the telling of legends concerning the Wars of the Roses,
the eating of wild goats for supper, and the singing of ballads to the
lute by a young English damsel--a scene of Scottish or Swiss flavour
of the kind which has been made familiar to our imagination by the pen
of Sir Walter Scott.
Of this there is nothing in our country. How quiet and dreamy are the
three or four villages which constitute that restful region! They lie
not far from one another, and seem to have been thrown into their
respective positions by some giant hand, and ever since to have
maintained those positions. In particular, one hut stands on the edge
of a ravine, with one-half its bulk projecting over the declivity, but
supported on three props. Within it some three or four generations
have spent happy, peaceful lives; for though it looks scarcely large
enough to house a chicken, it is none the less tenanted by a
well-to-do peasant and his wife. Onisim Suslov is the peasant's name,
and he cannot stand upright in his abode. The veranda actually
overhangs the ravine, and to reach it one has with one hand to grasp
the herbage, and, with the other, the gable before setting foot upon
the structure itself. Another of the huts is, as it were, gummed to
the side of a hill, like a swallow's nest, while three others stand
close beside it, and two are situated at the bottom of the ravine.
In the village all is quiet. The doors of its solitary little
dwellings stand open, but not a soul is to be seen. Only the flies
circle and buzz in clusters. Were you to enter one of the huts, you
would call aloud in vain, for your only answer would be the deathlike
silence, except that here and there you might hear the gasping of an
invalid or the deep cough of some old woman who is living out her days
upon the stove. Also, there might appear from behind the fence a
long-haired, barefooted youngster of three, clad only in a shirt, who
would gaze mutely at the new-comer, and then timidly hide himself
again.
The same deep silence, the same deep peace, lies also upon the fields.
Only somewhere over the distant soil there can be seen moving, like an
ant, a sunburnt ploughman. Occasionally he leans upon his plough to
clear his forehead of the sweat. Even the manners of that region are
possessed of a still restfulness which nothing can disturb. Never has
a robbery or a murder or a similar happening been known there; never
have the inhabitants succumbed to strong passions, or experienced
hazardous adventures. Indeed, what passions, what adventures would
have the power to move them? No man has ever strayed beyond his own
circle, for the local inhabitants dwell far from other men, and both
the nearest village and the nearest country town lie distant from
twenty-five to thirty versts. True, at given seasons the peasants
cart their grain to the river wharf which lies nearest to them, and
once a year, also, they attend a fair; but they maintain no relations
beyond these. In fact, all their interests are centred in themselves.
True, they know that eighty versts away there stands the provincial
capital; but few of them have ever journeyed thither. Also they know
that beyond it stand Saratov and Nizhni Novgorod--likewise they have
heard that such places as Moscow and Petrograd exist, and that on the
farther side of them dwell folk who are known as Germans and French;
but beyond that point there begins for them, as it did for the
ancients, a mysterious world of unknown countries which are peopled
with monsters and two-headed giants, and bounded on the outer side by
a void of mist, and, again, by the colossal fish which bears the world
on its back. Moreover, since this peaceful corner of the universe is
almost inaccessible, there filters thither but few items of news
concerning the great white universe. Indeed, even traders in rustic
wares who live twenty versts away know no more than they do.
Likewise, it never enters into their heads to compare their lot with
those of other men--to inquire whether other men are rich or poor,
comfortable or in need, for these peasants live in the fortunate
belief that no circumstances could ever be different to their
own--that all other folk must surely be living even as they are, and
that to live in any other fashion would be a sin. Were you to assure
them that others plough, sow, reap, or sell their produce in any way
than that which obtains in this particular spot, the inhabitants would
not believe you. That being so, how could any element of vexation or
disturbance ever come nigh them? True, they resemble the rest of
humanity in that they have their cares and weaknesses and obligations
of tax-payment and fits of laziness and lethargy; but these press upon
them but lightly, and occasion no real stirring of the blood. Indeed,
during the past five years not a single soul of that local population
of hundreds has died either a violent death or a natural. Even should
a man or a woman expire of old age or a senile disease, it is not long
before the rest have got over their astonishment at the unusual
occurrence. In the same way, after the trader Tarass had come near to
steaming himself to death in his hut, and had had to be revived with
cold water, the affair caused scarcely any stir in the neighbourhood.
Of crimes, one only--that of theft of produce from market gardens--is
at all prevalent. Also, once two pigs and a chicken mysteriously
disappeared. True, the latter event threw the district into something
of a turmoil, but was unanimously ascribed to a pedlar who, the
previous evening, had passed through the district on his way to a
fair. In general, such untoward incidents are of the greatest rarity.
However, in a ditch in a paddock near the bridge once there was found
lying a man--apparently a member of a party which had just traversed
the neighbourhood en route for the country town. Some boys were the
first to notice him, and at once they came running home with a
horrifying tale of a great serpent or werewolf which was crouching in
a hole. To this they added a statement that the said creature had
pursued them, and come near to devouring Kuzka. From far and near the
peasants armed themselves with hatchets and pitchforks, and proceeded
to the ditch en masse.
"Whither away?" the old men said reprovingly. "Are you mad? What do
you want to do? Leave things alone, and no harm will come of it!"
Nevertheless the peasants set forth, and, when about a hundred paces
from the spot, began to adjure the monster in varying terms. But no
answer was returned. Next, after halting a moment, the party advanced
a little further. The man seemed still to be lying in the ditch, with
his head resting against a fence, while beside him lay a satchel and a
cudgel (on the latter of which was slung a pair of boots). Yet the
peasants could not summon up the necessary courage to approach him or
to touch him.
"Hi, friend!" they shouted--one scratching his head and another the
back of his neck. "What are you doing there? Who are you? What is
the matter?"
The traveller made as though to raise his head a little, but failed.
Evidently he was ill or tired out. Then a peasant ventured to touch
him with a pitchfork.
"Don't interfere with him, don't interfere with him!" cried the rest.
"How do we know what he is, seeing that he refuses to speak? Leave
him alone, friends!"
"Yes, we had better go away," added certain others. "What has he to
do with us? Harm might come of him."
So all returned to the village, and told the elder men that, lying in
a ditch, there was a strange man who would not speak, and whose
identity was known only to God.
"If he does not belong to these parts, leave him alone," advised the
elders from the spot where, with hands on knees, they were sitting
resting on a bank. "Yes, leave him to himself. 'Tis no use your
going there."
This, then, was the corner of the world whither Oblomov passed in his
sleep. Of the three or four scattered villages in the region, one was
named Sosnovka, and a second Vavilovka--the two being distant from one
another about a verst. Together they constituted Oblomov's hereditary
estate, and bore the joint title of Oblomovka. In Sosnovka stood the
manor-house and the farm, while five versts from the village there lay
the hamlet of Verklevo--once the property of the Oblomovs, but long
since passed into other hands. The same hamlet had attached to it a
number of outlying huts. As a whole, Verklevo belonged to a rich
landowner, a constant absentee, and the estate was managed by a German
bailiff. There you have the geography of this remote corner of the
world.
Oblomov dreamed that, aged seven, he awoke in his little cot at home.
He felt merry and full of life. What a goodly, handsome, plump
youngster he was, with cheeks of such rotundity that, however
desperately any other young scamp might have tried to rival them by
inflation of his own, no competitor could possibly have succeeded.
Oblomov's nurse had long been waiting for him to awake, and now she
began to draw on for him his stockings. This he refused to allow her
to do; which end he attained by frisking and kicking, while she tried
to catch hold of his leg, and the pair laughed joyously together.
Finally, she lifted him on to her lap, and washed him, and combed his
hair; after which she conducted him to his mother. On seeing his
long-dead parent, the sleeping Oblomov's form trembled with delight
and affection, and from under his unconscious eyelids there stole and
remained two burning tears. . . .
Upon him his mother showered affectionate kisses, and gazed at him
with tender solicitude to see whether his eyes were clear and healthy.
Did he in any way ail? she inquired. Had he (this to his nurse)
slept quietly, or had he lain awake all night? Had he had any dreams?
Had he been at all feverish? Lastly, she took him by the hand, and
led him to the sacred ikon. Kneeling with one arm around his form,
she prompted him in the words of the prayers, while the boy repeated
them with scanty attention, since he preferred, rather, to turn his
eyes to the windows, whence the freshness and scent of a lilac-tree
was flooding the room.
"Shall we go for a walk to-day, mamma?" suddenly he asked.
"Yes, darling," she replied hastily, but kept her gaze fixed upon the
ikon, and hurriedly concluded the sacred formula. Yet into the words
of that formula her very soul was projected, whereas the little one
repeated them only in nonchalant fashion.
The prayer over, they went to greet his father, and then to take
morning tea. Beside the table Oblomov could see seated the aunt of
eighty who had always lived with them. Never did she cease to grumble
at the ancient serving-maid who, her head trembling with senility,
stood behind her chair to wait upon her. Also there were present
three old maiden ladies who were distant relatives of his father's; a
weak-minded gentleman named Chekmenev, who, the brother-in-law of
Oblomov's mother, was the owner of seven serfs, and happened to be
staying with Oblomov's parents; and certain other old men and women.
The latter, the domestic staff and retinue of the Oblomov family,
caught hold of the little Ilya Ilyitch, and started to heap him with
caresses and attentions--so much so that he had much ado to wipe away
the traces of these unsought kisses. Then there began the feeding of
the child with rolls, biscuits, and cream; after which his mother
bestowed upon him another embrace, and sent him out to walk round the
garden and the courtyard and the lake--accompanying her farewell with
particular instructions to the nurse that never must she leave the
child alone for a single moment, nor yet must she allow him to
approach the horses, the dogs, or the goat, nor yet must she take him
far from home. Above all things, never must the nurse suffer him to
approach the ravine, which was the most dreaded spot in the
neighbourhood, and bore an evil reputation. Once there had been found
there a dog which confessed itself a mad one, inasmuch as it had run
headlong from folk who chased it with hatchets and pitchforks, and had
disappeared behind a neighbouring hill. Likewise to the ravine
carrion was carted, while robbers and wolves and various other
creatures which never existed in the world at all were supposed to
dwell there.
But to these warnings of his mother's the child paid little heed.
Already he was outside, in the courtyard. With gleeful surprise (as
though for the first time in his life) he went the round of his
parents' establishment, with its gates sagging outwards, its dinted
roof where lichen grew, its tottering veranda, its various annexes and
outbuildings, and its overgrown garden. Also he yearned to ascend to
the hanging gallery which girdled the house, that thence he might see
the river; but the gallery was now in decay, and scarcely able to hold
together, so that none but the servants trod it, and at no time did
the gentry walk there. Heedless of his mother's warnings, however,
the little Oblomov was on the point of making for its seductive steps
when the nurse showed herself on the veranda, and caught hold of him.
Next, he rushed from her towards the hay-loft, with the intention of
scaling its steep ladder; and just had she time to destroy successive
schemes of ascending to the pigeon-cote, of penetrating to the
cattle-yard, and--Heaven preserve us all!--of making his way to the
ravine!
"God bless the child!" exclaimed the nurse. "Will you be quiet, then,
young sir? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" Indeed, the whole
day, as well as every day and every night, was spent by her in similar
alarums and excursions, in alternations of torture and relief on the
child's account, in terror because he had fallen and broken his nose,
in gratification at his warm, childish caresses, and in dim anxiety
concerning his ultimate future. Only these and like emotions made her
old heart beat and her old blood grow warm; only these retained in her
the drowsy life which, but for them, would long ago have flickered
out.
Yet the child was not always mischievous. Sometimes he would grow
suddenly quiet as, sitting beside her, he gazed fixedly before him
with his childish intellect taking in the various phenomena which
presented themselves to his vision. Such phenomena were sinking fast
into his mind, to grow and ripen there even as it grew and ripened.
The morning was a splendid one, and the air still fresh, since the sun
had not yet attained much height. From the house, from the trees,
from the dovecote, and from the gallery there streamed long shadows
which formed, in the garden and in the orchard, cool corners which
invited meditation and sleep. Only in the distance a rye-field was
glowing with flame, and the river sparkling and flashing in the rays
of the sun until actually it hurt the eyes to look at it.
"Why is it so dark in one place and bright in another?" asked the
child. "Will it soon be bright everywhere?"
"Yes. That is because the sun has come out to meet the moon, and at
times keeps frowning because he cannot catch sight of her. By and by
he will catch sight of her. Then he will send out his light once
more."
The child pondered, and gazed at the scene around him. Before him he
could see Antip driving the watercart, with another Antip, ten times
as large as the real one, accompanying him, and the barrel of the cart
looking as large as a house, and the horse's shadow covering the whole
of the pond. Then the shadows seemed to take two strides across the
pond, and then to move behind the hill, though the figure of Antip had
not yet left the courtyard. In his turn the child took a couple of
strides, and then a third, to see if he too would end by disappearing
behind the hill, which he had a great longing to ascend, for the
purpose of ascertaining what had become of the horse. Consequently he
set off towards the gates--but only to hear his mother calling from a
window--"Nurse, nurse, do you not see that the boy has just run out
into the sunshine? Pray bring him back into the shade, or he will get
a sunstroke, and be ill, and sick, and unable to eat! Besides, he
might run down into the ravine!"
"Oh, the naughty darling!" the nurse muttered to herself as she
dragged him back on to the veranda. The child looked about him with
the keen, observant glance of a "grown-up" who is debating how best a
morning can be spent. Not a trifle, not a circumstance, escaped the
child's inquisitive attention, so that insensibly the picture of his
home life engraved itself upon his mind, and his sensitive intellect
nourished itself on living examples, and involuntarily modelled its
programme of life on the life which surrounded it.
Never at any time could it be said that the morning was wasted in the
Oblomovs' establishment. The sound of knives in. the kitchen as they
minced cutlets and vegetables, reached even to the village; while from
the servants' quarters came the hum of a spindle, coupled with the
thin, low voice of an old woman--but a voice so low that with
difficulty could one distinguish whether she were weeping, or whether
she were merely improvising to herself a mournful "song without
words." Also, on Antip returning with the watercart, there would
advance to meet it, with pails, cans, and pitchers, a number of
maidservants and grooms, while from the storehouse an old woman would
a vessel of meal and a pile of eggs, and carry them to the kitchen.
There, on the cook suddenly throwing some water out of the window, the
cat Arapka--which, with eyes fixed upon the view, had spent the
morning in agitating the tip of her tail and licking herself--came in
for a splashing.
The head of the family, too, was not idle, for he spent the morning in
sitting by the window and following with his eyes everything which
took place in the courtyard.
"Hi, Ignashka, what have you there, you rascal?" he cried to a man who
happened to cross the open space.
"Some knives to be sharpened in the scullery," the man replied,
without looking at his master.
"Very well, then. Mind you sharpen them properly."
Next, the master stopped one of the maid-servants.
"Where are you going?" he inquired.
"To the cellar to get some milk for the table," she replied, shading
her eyes with her hand.
"Good!" he pronounced. "And see that you don't spill any. You,
Zakharka--where are you off to once more? This is the third time I
have seen you gadding about. Go back to your place in the hall."
Whereupon Zakharka returned to her day-dreams at the post mentioned.
Again, as soon as the cows returned from pasture, old Oblomov was
always there to see that they were properly watered. Also, when, from
his post at the window, he chanced to observe the yard-dog chasing one
of the hens he hastened to take the necessary measures against a
recurrence of such conduct. In the same way, his wife was fully
employed. For three hours she discussed with Averka, the tailor, the
best ways and means of converting a waistcoat of her husband's into a
jacket for her son--herself drawing the requisite lines in chalk, and
seeing to it that Averka should pilfer not a morsel of the cloth.
Thereafter she passed to the maids' room, where she parcelled out to
each damsel the day's portion of lacemaking; whence she departed to
summon one of her personal maids to attend her in the garden, for the
purpose of seeing how the apples were swelling, which of them had
fallen or were turning ripe, which trees wanted grafting or pruning,
and so forth. But her chief care was the kitchen and the dinner.
Concerning the latter she consulted the entire household, including
the aged aunt. Each member of the family proposed a special dish, and
the sum of these proposals was taken into consideration, adjudicated
upon in detail, and adopted or rejected according to the final
decision of the mistress. From time to time, also, a maid was
dispatched to the culinary regions to remind the cook of this, or to
tell her to add that, or to instruct her to change the other, while
conveying to her sugar, honey, and wine for flavouring, and also
seeing to it that the said cook was using everything which had been
measured out. In fact, the supervision of food was the first and the
principal domestic preoccupation of Oblomovka. What calves were not
fattened for the year's festivals! What poultry was not reared! What
forethought and care and skill were not devoted to the consumption of
comestibles! Game fowls and pullets were set apart solely for
birthdays and other solemn occasions wherefore they were stuffed with
nuts. For the same reason geese were caught several days beforehand,
and hung up in bags until wanted, in order that, being restrained from
exercise, they might put on the more fat. And what a roasting and a
pickling and a baking would sometimes take place, and what mead and
kvass were there not brewed, and what pies were there not compounded!
Until noon, therefore, everything at Oblomovka was in a state of
bustle and commotion. Life was indeed full and antlike and in
evidence! Even on Sundays and holidays these labour-loving ants did
not desist from their toil, for on such days the clatter of knives in
the kitchen sounded louder and more rapid than ever, a maid made
several journeys from the storeroom to the kitchen with double
quantities of meal and eggs, and in the poultry-run an added amount of
cackling and of bloodshed took place. Likewise, on such days there
was baked a gigantic pie, which was eaten by the gentry on the same
and the following days, and by the maids on the third and fourth;
after which, should it survive to the fifth day, the last stale
remnants, devoid of stuffing, were given, as a special favour, to
Antip, who, crossing himself, undauntedly attacked the rock-hard
fragments--though it was in the thought that it had recently been the
gentry's pie rather than in the pie itself that he took most delight;
even as an archæologist rejoices to drink even the poorest wine from
the shell of a thousand-year-old vessel.
All this the boy noted with his childish, ever-watchful mind. He
perceived that, after mornings thus usefully and busily spent, there
ensued noon and dinner. On the present occasion noontide was sultry,
and not a cloud was in the sky. Indeed, the sun seemed to be standing
still to scorch the grass, and the air to have ceased to circulate--to
be hanging without the slightest movement. Neither from tree nor lake
could the faintest rustle be heard, and over the village and the
countryside there hung an unbroken stillness, as though everything in
them were dead. Only from afar could a human voice be distinguished,
while, some twenty sazhens away, the drone of a flying beetle, with
the snoring of some one who had sunk into the thick herbage to enjoy a
refreshing sleep, came gently to the ear. Even the house was
possessed by a silence as of death, for the hour of post-prandial
slumber had arrived. The boy's father, mother, and aged grand-aunt,
with their attendants, could be seen disposed in various corners; and,
should any one not possess a particular corner, he or she repaired
either to the hay-loft or to the garden or to a cool resting-place
among the growing hay or, with face protected from the flies with a
handkerchief, to a spot where the scorching heat would assist
digestion after the enormous dinner. Even the gardener stretched
himself out beneath a bush by the side of his plot, and the coachman
in the stable.
Little Oblomov proceeded to peep into the servants' hall, where the
inmates were sleeping as though slumber had become an epidemic. On
the benches, on the floor, and on the threshold they slept, while
their children crawled about the courtyard and fashioned mud pies.
Indeed, the very dogs had crawled into their kennels, since there was
no longer any one to bark at. In short, one might have traversed the
entire establishment without meeting a single soul; and everything in
it could with ease have been stolen, and removed in carts from the
courtyard, since no one would have been there to prevent the deed.
The prevailing lethargy was all-consuming, all-conquering--a true
image of death; seeing that, but for the fact that from various
corners there came snores in different notes and keys, every one
seemed wholly to have departed this life. Only at rare intervals
would some one raise his head with a start, gaze around him with
vacant eyes, and then turn over to the other side.
After dinner the child accompanied his nurse for a second airing out
of doors. Yet, despite her mistress's injunctions and her own
resolves, the old woman could not altogether resist the general call
of sleep, and began to fall a victim to the all-prevalent malady of
Oblomovka. At first she kept a vigilant eye upon her little charge,
and, chiding him for his waywardness, never let him stray from her
side; but presently, after giving him strict instructions not to go
beyond the gates, nor to interfere with the goat, nor to climb either
the dovecote or the gallery, she settled herself in a shady spot, with
the ostensible intention of at once knitting a stocking and of
watching over young Oblomov. Next she took to checking him only in
lazy fashion, as her head nodded and she said to herself: "Look you,
he will certainly climb those stairs to the gallery, or else "--her
eyes had almost closed--"he will run down into the ravine." With that
her head sank forward, and the stocking slipped from her hands. In a
second her open mouth had emitted a gentle snore, and the boy had
disappeared from her vision.
Needless to say, this was the moment which the youngster had been
impatiently awaiting, for it marked the beginning of an independent
existence, and he was now alone in the wide, wide world. On tiptoe he
left the nurse's side, and, peeping cautiously at the other
slumberers, kept stopping to throw a second glance at any one who
chanced to stir, or to spit, or to snuffle in his sleep. At last,
with a tremor of joy in his heart, he made for the gallery, ascended
the creaking stairs at a run, scaled also the dovecote, explored the
recesses of the garden, listened to the buzzing of beetles, and
followed with his eyes their flight through the air. Next, on hearing
a chirping sound in the grass, he sought and captured the disturber of
the public peace, in the shape of a dragon-fly, whose wings he
proceeded to tear off, and whose body to impale upon a straw, in order
that he might see how, thus hampered, the creature would contrive to
fly. Afterwards, fearing almost to breathe, he watched a spider suck
blood from a captured fly, while the wretched victim struggled and
buzzed in the spider's claws. Finally the tragedy was brought to an
end by the boy slaying both torturer and tortured. Next, he repaired
to the moat to search for sundry small roots which he knew of; which
found, he peeled them, and then devoured the same with relish, in the
make-believe that they were the apples and preserves which his mamma
was accustomed to give him. This item exhausted, he hied him through
the entrance gates--his object in so doing being to reach a birch
copse which looked to him so close at hand that, should he take the
direct route, and not the circuitous high-road (that is to say, should
he walk straight across the moat, and through the osier plantation),
he would be able to attain his goal in five minutes. But, alas! he
felt afraid, for he had heard tales of wood goblins, of brigands, and
of fearsome wild beasts. Next, the spirit moved him to make for the
ravine, which lay a hundred paces from the garden; so, running to the
edge of the declivity, and puckering his eyes, he gazed into its
depths as into Vulcan's crater. Suddenly to his mind recurred all the
tales and traditions concerning the spot; and terror seized him, and,
half-dead, half-alive, he rushed back and threw himself into his
nurse's arms. Awakened, she sprang up, straightened the cap on her
head, arranged her grey curls with one finger, and pretended never to
have been to sleep at all. Glancing suspiciously at the little Ilya,
and then at the gentry s windows, she began with tremulous hands to
work the knitting needles of the stocking which had been lying in her
lap.
Meanwhile the heat had decreased, and everything in nature had revived
a little, since the sun was fast declining towards the forest.
Gradually the stillness indoors also began to be broken. Here and
there a door creaked, footsteps could be heard crossing the yard, and
some one sneezed in the hay-loft. Soon from the kitchen a man came
hurrying under the weight of a huge samovar, and the entire household
then assembled for tea--one man with his face flushed and his eyes
still dim, another man with red marks on his cheek and temple, a third
speaking in a voice not his own for drowsiness, and all of them
snuffling, wheezing, yawning, scratching their heads, and stretching
themselves in a semi-waking condition. It seemed that dinner and
sleep had combined to arouse an unquenchable thirst which parched the
throat, for even dozens of cupfuls of tea could not assuage it, and,
amid a chorus of sighs and grunts, resort had to be made to bilberry
wine, to perry, to kvass, and even to more medicinal methods of
moistening this avidity of gullet. The company sought relief from
thirst as from a Heaven-sent plague, and all felt as exhausted as
though they were travelling in the Arabian desert, and could nowhere
find a spring.
By his mother's side the child gazed at the strange faces around him,
and listened to the drowsy, drawling talk. Yet the spectacle
delighted him, and he found each stray word interesting.
After tea every one took up some minor occupation or another. One man
repaired to the riverside, and strolled along the brink--kicking
pebbles into the water as he did so. Another took a seat in a window,
and followed with his eyes each passing occurrence. Should a cat
cross the courtyard, or a jackdaw fly by, the watcher scanned both the
one and the other, and turned his head to right and to left in order
to do so. In the same way will dogs spend whole days at a
window--their heads thrust into the sunlight, and their gaze taking
stock of every passer-by.
The mother took little Ilya's head in her hands, drew it down into her
lap, and combed his hair with a gentle caress as, inviting her maids
to admire him, she talked concerning his future, and preordained for
him the hero's part in some splendid epic. For their part, the maids
foretold for him mountains of gold.
At length dusk began to draw in. Once more the fire crackled in the
kitchen, and the clatter of knives became audible. Supper was being
prepared. Meanwhile the rest of the servants gathered at the entrance
gates, and thence came sounds of laughter, and of music, and of the
playing of gorielki. The sun had sunk behind the forest, yet still
was sending forth rays in a fiery, faintly warm streak which, as it
passed over the surface of the treetops, touched to gold the tips of
the pines. Finally these rays successively expired, until only a
solitary beam could be seen fixed, needle-like, in a cluster of boughs
before going to join its comrades. Objects then began to lose their
outline, and the scene to become blurred in, first greyness, then a
blank almost of total obscurity. The songs of birds grew fainter,
then ceased altogether, save for one persistent singer which, as
though disagreeing with its fellows, continued to break the silence
with intermittent warbling. Presently it too took to uttering its
song at rarer intervals, and to whistling with more feeble insistence;
until finally it breathed a last soft-drawn note, gave a flutter or
two which gently stirred the foliage around it, and--fell asleep.
After that all was silent, save that some crickets were chirping in
chorus and against one another. A mist was rising from the earth, and
spreading over lake and river. Like everything else, the latter had
sunk to rest; and though something caused it to splash for a last
time, the water instantly resumed its absolute immobility. In the air
a dampness could be detected, and the air itself could be felt growing
warmer and warmer. Amid it the trees looked like groups of monsters;
and when, suddenly, something cracked in the weird depths of the
forest, it might have been thought that one of those monsters had been
shifting its position, and with its foot had snapped a dry bough in
doing so. Overhead, the first star could be seen glowing like a
living eye, while in the windows of the house were a few twinkling
lights. The hour of nature's most solemn, all-embracing silence had
arrived--the hour when the creative brain can work at its best, and
when poetic thought seethes most ardently, and when the heart flames
with the greatest heat of passion or with the greatest poignancy of
grief--the hour when the cruel soul ripens to a maximum of strength
and composure as it meditates evil--the hour when, at Oblomovka, every
one settled down to a night of profound, calm restfulness.
"Let us go for a walk," said little Ilya to his mother.
"God bless the child!" she cried. "How could we go for a walk? It is
now damp, and you would get your little feet wet. Besides, we should
find it dreadful out of doors, for at this hour the wood goblin is
abroad, and he carries off little boys."
"To what place does he carry them, and what is he like, and where does
he live?" asked the child; whereupon the mother gave full rein to her
unbridled fancy. As she did so the child listened with blinking eyes
until at length, on sleep completely overcoming him, the nurse
approached, took him from his mother's lap, and bore him to bed, with
his head hanging over her shoulder.
"Another day is over, praise be to God!" said the inmates of Oblomovka
as, yawning, they made the sign of the cross and then retired to rest.
"Well spent it has been, and God send that to-morrow be like it.
Glory, O Lord, to Thee this night! Glory, O Lord, to Thee!"
Oblomov dreamed a second dream. On a long winter's evening he was
pressing close to his nurse, and she was whispering of some unknown
country where neither cold nor darkness were known, and where miracles
took place, and where rivers ran honey and milk, and where no one did
anything the year round, and where only good boys like Ilya Ilyitch
himself walked day by day in company with maidens such as neither
tongue nor pen could hope to describe. Also (the nurse said) there
dwelt there a kind witch who sometimes revealed herself to mortals in
the shape of a pikefish; and this witch singled out as her especial
favourite a quiet, inoffensive boor who formerly had been the butt of
his fellows, and, for some unknown reason, heaped him with her bounty,
so that always he possessed plenty to eat, and clothes ever ready to
wear, and ended by marrying a marvellous beauty whose name was
Militrissa Kirbitievna.
The nurse related the story, and the child, with alert eyes and ears,
hung upon her words. So artfully did the nurse or tradition eliminate
from the story all resemblance to everyday life that the boy's keen
intellect and imagination, fired by the device, remained enthralled
until, in later years, he had come even to man's estate. As a matter
of fact, the tale which the nurse thus lovingly related was the legend
of the fool Emel--that clever, biting satire upon our forefathers and,
it may be, also upon ourselves. True, in proportion as he grew up,
little Oblomov came to learn that no such things as rivers of honey
and milk, or even such persons as kind witches, really existed; yet,
though he came to smile at his nurse's stories, that smile was never
wholly sincere, since always it would be accompanied by a sigh. For
him the legend confounded itself with life, and, unconsciously, he
found himself regretting that the legend differed from life, and that
life differed from the legend. Involuntarily he would dream of
Militrissa Kirbitievna, and feel attracted towards the country whereof
nothing was known except that folk there went for walks, and were free
from sorrow and care. Never could he rid himself of a longing to
spend his days in lying upon the stove (even as the favourite of the
legend had done), and to be dressed in ready-made, unearned clothes,
and to eat at the expense of a benevolent witch. To the same story
had his father and his grandfather listened as, shaped according to
the stereotyped version current throughout antiquity, it had issued
from the mouths of male and female nurses through the long course of
ages and of generations.
Then Oblomov's nurse proceeded to draw another picture for the
imagination of her charge. That is to say, she told him of the
exploits of the Russian Achilleses and Ulysseses, and of the manner in
which those heroes had been used to wander about Russia, and to kill
and slay; and of how once they had disputed as to which of them could
best drain a beaker of wine at a draught. Also, she told the boy of
cruel robbers, of sleeping princesses, and of cities and peoples which
had been turned into stone. Lastly, she passed to Russian demonology,
to dead folk, to monsters, and to werewolves. With a simplicity, yet
a sincerity, worthy of Homer, with a lifelike similitude of detail and
a power of clear-cut relief that might have vied with the great Greek
poet's, she fired the boy's intellect and imagination to a love for
that Iliad which our heroes founded during the dim ages when man had
not yet become adapted to the sundry perils and mysteries of nature
and of life--when still he trembled before werewolves and wood demons,
and sought refuge with protectors like Alesha Popovitch from the
calamities which surrounded him--when air and water and forest and
field alike were under the continued sway of the supernatural. Truly
the life of a mortal of those days must have been full of fear and
trembling, seeing that, should he but cross his threshold, he stood in
danger of being devoured by a wild beast, or of having his throat cut
by a brigand, or of being despoiled of his all by a Tartar, or of
disappearing from human ken without trace left! Again, celestial
portents would be seen in the shape of pillars and balls of fire,
while over a freshly made grave a light would glow, and some one would
seem to be walking through the forest with a lantern, and laughing
horribly, and flashing bright eyes amid the gloom. And in man's own
personality much that passed his understanding would also take shape
and materialize. No matter how long or how righteously a man might
have lived, he would suddenly start babbling, or shout aloud in a
voice not his own, or go wandering o' nights in a trance, or
involuntarily begin beating and assaulting his fellows. And just at
the moment when such things happened a hen would crow like a cock, and
a raven would croak from the gable! Consequently feeble mankind,
peering tremblingly at life, sought in its own imagination, its own
nature, a key to the mysteries which surrounded it: and it may be that
the immobility, the inertia, the absence of all active passion or
incident or peril which such a retired existence imposed upon man led
him to create, in the midst of the world of nature, another and an
impossible world, in which he found comfort and relief for his idle
intellect, explanations of the more ordinary sequences of events, and
extraneous solutions of extraordinary phenomena. In fact, our poor
forefathers lived by instinct. Neither wholly giving rein to nor
wholly restraining their volition, they found themselves either
naïvely surprised at or overcome with terror by the evils and the
misfortunes which befell them, and resorted for the causes of these
things to the dim, dumb hieroglyphics of nature. In their opinion,
death might come of carrying a corpse from a house head foremost
instead of with feet in front, and a fire be caused by the fact of a
dog having howled, three nights running, beneath a window. Hence
always they were at pains to remove a dead person feet
foremost--though continuing to eat the same quantity of food as
before, and to sleep on the bare ground; while, with regard to a
howling dog, always they drove away the animal with blows--though
continuing to scatter sparks broadcast over tinder-dry floors.
To this day the Russian, though surrounded by a stern, unimaginative
world of reality, loves to believe the seductive tales of antiquity.
And long will it be before he will have been weaned from that belief.
In the Same way, as little Oblomov listened to his nurse's legends
concerning the Golden Fleece, the great Cassowary Bird, and the cells
and secret dungeons of the Enchanted Castle, he became more and more
fired to the idea that he too was destined to become the hero of
doughty deeds. Tale succeeded to tale, and the nurse pursued her
narrative with such ardour and vividness and attractiveness of
description that at times her breath choked in her throat. For she
too half-believed the legends which she related; so that, during the
telling of them, her eyes would shoot fire, her head shake with
excitement, and her voice attain an unwonted pitch, while the child,
overcome with mysterious horror, would press closer and closer to her
side, and have tears in his eyes. Whether the narrative treated of
dead men rising from the tomb at midnight, or of victims languishing
in slavery to a monster, or of a bear with a wooden leg which went
roaming the villages and farms in search of the natural limb which had
been chopped from its body, the boy's hair bristled with fear, his
childish imagination alternately seethed and froze, and he experienced
the harassing, the sickly sweet, process of having his nerves played
upon like the strings of an instrument. When his nurse repeated the
words of the bear, "Creak, creak, wooden leg! I have visited every
village and farm, and have found all the women asleep save one, who is
now sitting on my back, and searing my flesh, and weaving my coat into
cloth"; when, also, the bear entered the right hut, and was just
getting ready to pounce upon the true ravisher of his natural
leg--why, then the boy could stand it no longer, but, trembling and
whimpering, flung himself into his nurse's arms with tears of
terror--yet also with a laugh of joy to think that he was not in the
clutches of the bear, but sitting on the stove couch beside his old
guardian. Full of strange phantoms was his mind, and fear and grief
had sunk deep (and, possibly, for ever) into his soul. Mournfully he
gazed about him, and saw that everything in life was charged with evil
and misfortune. And as he did so he would keep thinking of the magic
country where neither cruelty nor noise nor grief existed, and where
Militrissa Kirbitievna lived, and where folk were fed and clothed for
nothing. . . .
Not only over the Oblomovkan children, but also over the Oblomovkan
adults, did this legend exercise a lifelong sway. Every one in the
house and the village alike--from the barin and his wife down to the
blacksmith Tarass--became a trifle nervous as evening drew on, seeing
that at that hour every tree became transformed into a giant, and
every bush into a robbers' den. The rattle of a shutter, the howl of
the wind in the chimney, caused these folk to turn pale. At
Epiphany-tide not a man or a woman of them would go out of doors after
ten o'clock at night; and never during the season of Easter would any
one venture o' nights into the stable, lest there he should be
confronted by the domovoi, by the horse demon.
At Oblomovka everything was believed in--including even ghosts and
werewolves. Had you informed an inmate of the place that a haycock
was walking about in the fields, he would have believed it. Had you
spread abroad a rumour that (say) a certain sheep was not a sheep at
all, but something else, or that Martha or Stepanida had become turned
into a witch, the company would thenceforth have walked in terror both
of the sheep and of the maidservant. Never would their heads have
thought it necessary to inquire why the sheep had ceased to be a
sheep, or why Martha or Stepanida had become turned into a witch.
Rather these credulous folk would have thrown themselves upon any
doubter--so strong was Oblomovka's belief in supernatural phenomena.
Later, little Oblomov came to see that the world is ordered on a
simple plan, and that dead folk never rise from the tomb, and that no
sooner do giants appear than they are clapped into booths, as robbers
are cast into prison: yet, though his actual belief in such marvels
vanished, there remained behind a sediment of terror and of
unaccountable sadness. Nothing was to be apprehended from
monsters--that he knew full well; but always he stood in awe of
something which seemed to be awaiting him at every step; and, if left
alone in a dark room, or if fated to catch sight of a corpse, he would
tremble with that sense of oppressive foreboding which his infancy had
instilled into his very being. Inclined, of a morning, to laugh at
his fears, of an evening his countenance paled again.
In the next dream Oblomov saw himself a boy of thirteen or fourteen.
By this time he was going to school at the village of Verklevo, five
versts from Oblomovka, where an old German named Schtoltz kept a small
educational establishment for the sons of neighbouring gentry.
Schtoltz had a son of his own--one Andrei, a boy almost of the same
age as Oblomov; while likewise he had been given charge of a boy who
did few lessons, for the reason that he suffered from scrofula and was
accustomed to spend most of his days with his eyes and ears bandaged,
and weepiog quietly because he was not living with his grandmother,
but, rather, in a strange house and amid hard-hearted folk who never
petted him or baked him his favourite pies. These three boys
constituted the only pupils. As for the tutor himself, he was both
capable and strict--like most Germans; wherefore Oblomov might have
received a good education had Oblomovka stood five hundred versts from
Verklevo. As it was, the atmosphere, the mode of life, and the
customs of Oblomovka extended also to Verklevo, and the one place
represented a sort of replica of the other, until only old Schtoltz's
establishment stood clear of the primordial mist of laziness, of
simplicity of morals, of inertia, and of immobility for which
Oblomovka was distinguished. With the scenes, the incidents, and the
morals of that mode of life young Oblomov's mind and heart had become
saturated before even he had seen his first book. Who knows how early
the growth of the intellectual germ in the youthful brain begins? Can
we, in that youthful consciousness, follow the growth of first
impressions and ideas? Possibly, even before a child has learnt to
speak, or even to walk, or even to do more than to look at things with
the dumb, fixed gaze which his elders call "dull," it has already
discerned and envisaged the meaning, the inter-connection, of such
phenomena as encompass its sphere--and that though the child is still
powerless to communicate the fact, whether to itself or to others.
Thus for a long time past young Oblomov may have remarked and
understood what was being said and done in his presence; for a long
time past he may have understood why his father, in plush breeches and
a wadded, cinnamon-coloured coat, walked to and fro with his hands
behind his back, and took snuff, and sneezed, while his mother passed
from coffee to tea, and from tea to dinner, in the daily round, and
his father always refused to believe how many sheaves had been cut and
reaped, but was for ever looking out for derelictions of duty, and, a
handkerchief in his hand, holding forth on the subject of
irregularities, and turning the whole place upside down. Briefly, for
a long time past the boy may have decided in his mind that that, and
no other, order of life was the right one. For how else could he have
decided? In what manner did the "grown-ups" of Oblomovka live? God
only knows whether they ever asked themselves for what purpose life
had been given them. Did they, at all events, return themselves any
answer to that question? No, no answer at all, since the whole thing
seemed to them at once simple and clear. Had they, then, never heard
of a hard life wherein people walk with anxious hearts, and roam the
face of the earth, and devote their existence to everlasting toil?
No, the good folk of Oblomovka had no belief in disturbing the mind;
they never adopted as their mode of life a round of ceaseless
aspirations somewhither, and towards an indefinite end. In fact, they
feared the distraction of passion as they did fire; and as, in other
spheres, men's and women's bodies burn with the volcanic violence of
inward and spiritual flame, so the souls of the denizens of Oblomovka
lay plunged in an undisturbed inertia which possessed their
ease-loving organisms to the core. Consequently, life did not stamp
them, as it stamped others, with premature wrinkles; nor did it deal
out to them any morally destructive blows or misfortunes. These
good-humoured folk looked upon life as, rather, an idyll of peace and
inactivity--though an idyll occasionally broken by such untoward
incidents as sicknesses, losses, quarrels, and rare bouts of labour.
That labour they endured as a punishment formerly imposed upon their
forefathers also; yet they never loved it, and invariably escaped its
incidence whenever they found it possible so to do. Such an avoidance
they considered permissible, for never did they worry themselves with
vague moral or intellectual questions. In this manner they flourished
in constant health and cheerfulness: for which reason most of them
lived to a green old age. Men of forty would look like youths, and
old men, instead of battling with the approach of a hard and painful
end, lived to the utmost possible limit, and then died, as it were,
unawares, and with a gentle chilling of the frame, and an
imperceptible drawing of the closing breath. No wonder that in these
days folk say that the people used to be more robust!
Yes, it was more robust, for the reason that in those days parents did
not hurry to explain to a boy the meaning of life, and to prepare him
for life as for something at once difficult and solemn. No, they did
not weary a child with books which would cloud his head with questions
likely to devour the heart and the intellect, and to shorten
existence. Rather, the standard of life was furnished him and taught
him by parents who had received it ready-made from their parents,
together with a testamentary injunction to preserve the integrity, the
inviolability of that standard as they would have done that of the
Vestal flame. As things were done in the time of Oblomovkan fathers
and grandfathers, so were they done in the time of the present
Oblomov's tenure of the estate. Of what needed he to think?
Concerning what needed he to trouble his head? What needed he to
learn? What ends needed he to compass? The Oblomovs required
nothing--their life flowed like a peaceful river, and all that they
had to do was to sit on the bank of that river, and to observe the
inevitable phenomena which, successively, and unsought, presented
themselves to the eyes of each observer.
Before the vision of the sleeping Oblomov there next uprose a series
of living pictures of the three chief acts of Oblomovkan life, as
played in the presence of his family, of his relatives, and of his
friends--namely, the three acts of birth, of marriage, and of death.
This was succeeded by a varied procession of minor incidents of life,
whether grave or gay--of baptisms, birthdays, family festivals,
Shrovetides, Easters, convivial feasts, family gatherings, welcomes,
farewells, and occasions of official congratulation or condolence.
These passed before Oblomov's vision with solemn exactitude, and also
he beheld the bearing of familiar faces at these ceremonies, according
as they were affected by vanity or by care. No matter what the
festival might be--whether a betrothal or a solemn wedding or a
name-day--every possible social rule had to be consulted, and no
mistake made as to where each person was to sit, what presents, and to
what value, ought to be given, who was to walk with whom at the
ceremony, and what signals had best be made during its course.
Do you think, then, that goodly children would not result from such
formal unitings? For answer you would need but to look at the rosy,
heavy little cupids which the mothers of the place carried or led by
the hand. Every one of those mothers would have insisted that their
little ones were the plumpest, the whitest, and the healthiest
children possible. Another local custom was to make a lark-pie as
soon as spring came in. Without it spring would not have been spring
at all, for observances of this kind comprised the whole life, the
whole scientific knowledge, of the inhabitants, all of whose joys and
sorrows were bound up with Oblomovka, and whose hearts beat high at
the anticipation of such local rites and feasts and ceremonies. Yet
no sooner had they christened, married, or buried an individual than
they forgot both the latter and his (or her) fate, and relapsed into
their usual apathy until aroused by a new occasion--by a baptism, a
wedding, or other happening of the kind. Directly a child was born
the parents made it their first care to perform over the little one
every ceremony prescribed by decorum, and then to follow up the
christening with a banquet. Thereafter the child's bringing up began
according to a system dictated by the mother and the nurse for his
healthy development, and for his protection from cold, from the evil
eye, and from sundry other inimical influences. Indeed, no pains were
spared to keep the youngster in good appetite and spirits. Also as
soon as he was able to fend for himself, and a nurse had become a
superfluity, his mother would be seized with a desire to procure for
him a helpmeet as strong and as ruddy as himself; whereupon there
would ensue a further epoch of rites and feastings, until eventually a
marriage had been arranged. Always this consummation represented the
epitome of life's incidents, and as soon as it was reached there began
a repetition of births, rites, and banquets, until, finally, a funeral
ceremony interrupted the festivities--though not for long, since other
faces would appear to succeed the old ones, and children would become
youths and maidens, and plight their troth to one another, and marry
one another, and produce individuals similar to themselves. Thus life
stretched out in a continuous, uniform chain which broke off
imperceptibly only when the tomb had been reached.
True, there were times when other cares overtook the good folk of
Oblomovka, but always they faced the situation with stoical
immobility, and the said cares, after circling over their heads, flew
away like birds which, having sought to cling to a smooth,
perpendicular wall, find that they are fluttering their wings in vain
against the stubborn stone, and therefore spread those pinions and
depart. For instance, on one occasion a portion of the gallery around
the house fell upon, and buried under its ruins, a hen-coop full of
poultry, as well as, in doing so, narrowly missed a serving-woman who
happened to be sitting near the spot with her husband. At once the
establishment was in an uproar. Every one came running to the scene,
under the impression that not only the hencoop, but also the barinia
and little Ilya, were lying under the débris. Every one held up his
or her hands in horror, and fell to blaming every one else for not
having foreseen the catastrophe. Every one expressed surprise that
the gallery had fallen, and also surprise that it had not fallen long
ago. Upon that there ensued a clamour and a discussion as to how
things could best be put right; after which, with sighs of regret for
the poultry, the company slowly dispersed, while strictly forbidding
little Ilya to approach the ruins. Three weeks later Andrushka,
Petrushka, and Vassika were ordered to chop the planks and the
remainder of the balustrade in pieces, and then to remove the
fragments to the outbuildings, lest the road should become obstructed;
and in the outbuildings those fragments tossed about until the
following spring. Every time that the elder Oblomov saw them from the
window he fell to thinking what had best be done with them. Summoning
the carpenter, he took counsel with the man as to whether he had
better build a new gallery or pull down what was left of the old one;
until finally he dismissed his subordinate with the words, "Do you
wait a little until I have considered the matter further." The same
thing went on until, one day, either Vassika or Motika reported to the
barin that that morning, while he (Vassika or Motika) had been
climbing over the remains of the old gallery, the corners of it had
come away from the walls, and more of the structure had fallen;
whereupon the carpenter was summoned to a final consultation, and the
upshot was that some of the old fragments were used to prop the
remaining portions of the gallery. Sure enough, by the close of the
month this had been done.
"Aye, that gallery looks as good as new, the old man said to his wife.
"See how splendidly Thedot has re-erected the beams! They resemble
the pillars which the Governor has just had fitted to his house. The
job has been well done, and will last for a long time."
Here some one reminded him that it would be as well also to have the
gates rehung and the veranda repaired, since the holes in the steps to
the latter were affording access, not only to the cats, but also to
the pigs.
"Yes, yes, it ought to be done," said the barin thoughtfully. Then he
went out to look at the veranda. "Yes, certainly the thing is
breaking up," he continued as he see-sawed one of the planks like a
cradle.
"They have been loose ever since the veranda was made," some one
remarked.
"How so?" asked the barin. "They are loose only because the floor has
not been mended for sixteen years. It was done then by Luka. He was
a carpenter, if you like! Now he is dead, may God rest his soul!
Workmen are not as clever as they used to be--they merely spoil
things."
From that old Oblomov turned his attention to something else; and to
this day--so report has it--the veranda is rickety, though not
actually fallen to pieces. Certainly Luka must have been a good
workman!
However, to do the master and the mistress justice, they were capable
of being shaken out of their apathy, even to the point of growing
angry and heated, should any failure or misfortune occur. How, they
would inquire, could such and such a matter have come to be overlooked
or neglected? At once due measures must be taken. Perhaps this would
be relative to the fact that the footbridge over the moat needed
mending, or that the garden fence called for repairs at a spot where
the planking was lying flat upon the ground and allowing the cattle to
enter and spoil the shrubs. Indeed, so solicitous was the barin for
his property that once, when walking in the garden, he, with his own
hands, and with many grunts and groans, lifted up a length of fencing,
and ordered the gardener to fix a couple of props to the same; and to
this activity on the part of the proprietor was due the fact that the
said fence remained upright during the whole of the remainder of the
summer--until once more a winter snowstorm laid it low. Also, when
Antip, with his horse and water-cart, fell through the bridge into the
moat three new planks were inserted into the structure! Indeed, Antip
had not recovered from his bruising before the bridge was looking
almost as good as new! And even when the garden fence collapsed a
second time the cows and the goats did not reap very much advantage
from the event. True, they managed to devour a few currant-bushes,
and also to strip a dozen lime-trees; but before they could begin also
upon the apple-trees an order was issued that the fence should be
properly dug in and reditched. But this was only after two cows and a
goat had been caught redhanded. You should have seen the distension
of their stomachs with the generous fare! . . .
Once more Oblomov dreamed that he was in the great, dark drawing-room
at home. The long winter's evening was closing in, and his mother,
seated on the sofa and engaged in quietly knitting a boy's stocking,
was yawning occasionally, and scratching her head with a
knitting-needle. Beside her were two maids--their heads bent over
their work as industriously they fashioned a holiday garment either
for young Ilya or for his father or for themselves. Meanwhile the
barin, with hands clasped behind his back, was pacing cheerfully to
and fro, or seating himself on a chair for a moment or two before
resuming his walk. Ever and anon, too, he would take a pinch of
snuff, sneeze, and then take another pinch. As for light, it came
from a single tallow candle, and even the said candle was a luxury
permitted only on autumn and winter evenings; for in summer every one
contrived to rise and to go to bed by daylight, so that candles might
be saved altogether. This was a practice which had arisen partly from
custom and partly from economy. Of every commodity not produced at
home, but requiring, rather, to be bought, the good folk of Oblomovka
were extremely parsimonious; so that, although they would willingly
slaughter a fine gamefowl or a dozen young pullets for a guest's
entertainment, not a raisin too much would be put into a pudding, and
every face would whiten if the said guest should pour himself out a
second glassful of wine. Very seldom, however, did such contretemps
occur: only the most abandoned of wretches would have done things like
those--and guests of that kidney never obtained even admittance to
Oblomovka. Local manners required that, what though twice or thrice
invited to partake of a given dish or a given bottle of wine, the
guest should not do so, since he was supposed to be aware that even
the first invitation had conveyed a secret prayer that he would kindly
abstain from the dish or bottle of wine after merely tasting of the
same. Nor were two candles lit for every guest, since candles
required to be bought in the town, and therefore, like all other
purchased articles, were kept under lock and key by the lady of the
house, and, with the candle-ends, were counted before being stored
away.
In short, Oblomovka disliked disbursing hard cash; so much so that,
however much a given article might be required, the money for it would
be handed out with reluctance, however insignificant the sum. As for
any considerable outlay, it was accompanied with groans, lamentations,
and high words, since the Oblomovkans would suffer any kind of
misfortune rather than part with their coin. For this reason the sofa
in the drawing-room had long been in rags, and the leather on the
barin's arm-chair leather only by courtesy, since most of its cord and
rope stuffing was now exposed, and only a single strip of the original
covering clung to the back of the chair--the rest having, during the
past five years, become split into strips, and fallen away. For the
same reason the entrance gates had sagged, and the veranda become
rickety. Nevertheless, to pay out, say, from two to five hundred
roubles for a given purpose, however necessary that purpose might be,
seemed to the inhabitants of the establishment something almost
approaching suicide. In fact, on hearing that a young landowner of
the neighbourhood had gone to Moscow and there paid three hundred
roubles for a dozen shirts, twenty-five for a pair of boots, and forty
for a waistcoat (it was on the occasion of the landowner's marriage),
old Oblomov crossed himself, and exclaimed with an expression of
horror: "That young man ought to be clapped into prison!" In general,
the Oblomovkans paid no heed to politico-economic axioms concerning
the necessity of swift, brisk circulation of capital, or concerning
the active production and exchange of commodities. In the simplicity
of their souls they considered that the best theory, as well as the
best practice, with regard to capital was to hoard it.
On chairs in the drawing-room there would be seated snoring, in
different attitudes, the gentry and customary intimates of the house.
For the most part a profound silence would reign among them, for they
saw one another every day, and their respective stores of intellectual
wealth had long been tapped and explored, while news from without
arrived but scantily. Indeed, amid the stillness the only sound to be
heard would be that of old Oblomov's heavy, workaday slippers, the
dull beat of the clock in its case, and the snapping of thread as one
or another of the sewing party bit or broke off a piece. Perhaps
after half an hour of this one of those present would yawn--then make
the sign of the cross over the lips, and murmur: "Lord, pardon me!"
Next, some one would follow suit, and then a third, until the
infectious desire to ventilate the lungs had gone the round of the
company. Next, old Oblomov would approach the window, look through
it, and say with a touch of surprise: "Only five o'clock, yet already
it is dark in the courtyard!"
"Yes," some one would answer, "'tis always dark by this time. The
long evenings are beginning to draw in."
In spring, contrariwise, the company would fall to expressing surprise
and gratification at the thought that the long days were approaching.
Yet, had you inquired what the long days meant to them, they could not
possibly have told you! After this episode silence would resume its
sway, until, perhaps, in snuffing the candle, some one would chance to
extinguish it. Upon that every one would give a start, and one of the
company would be sure to ejaculate: "An unexpected guest is making his
way in our direction." In fact, it was not an uncommon phenomenon for
the incident to give rise to a lengthy conversation.
Time, at Oblomovka, was reckoned mostly by festivals, by the seasons
of the year, and by various family and domestic events--no reference
whatsoever being made to months or to the days of a month. This may
have partly arisen from the fact that none but old Oblomov were
capable of distinguishing between the names of the months and the
dates in a given month.
Presently the head of the family would relapse into meditation, while
little Ilya, lolling behind his mother's back, would also be sunk in
dreams, and at times actually dozing. Suddenly old Oblomov would (to
take a typical incident) halt in the middle of his pacing, and clap
his hand anxiously to the tip of his nose; whereupon there would ensue
some such dialogue as the following:--
The master of the house: What on earth is the matter with me? See!
Some one must have passed away, for the tip of my nose is itching!
His wife: Good Lord! Why should any one have passed away because the
tip of your nose is sore? Some one has passed away only when the
bridge of one's nose is hurting one. What a forgetful man you are, to
be sure! Were you to say a thing like that before strangers, you
would make us blush for you.
The master of the house: But every part of my nose is hurting me?
His wife: Pain at the side of it means news to come; in the eyebrows,
sorrow; in the forehead, a greeting; on the right side, a man; on the
left side, a woman; in the ears, rain; in the lips, a kiss; in the
whiskers, a present of something to eat; in the elbow, a new place to
sleep in; and in the sole of the foot, a journey.
And so forth, and so forth.
Lastly, when nine o'clock had struck there would follow supper; after
which the company would disperse to rest, and sleep would once more
reign over the care-free heads of the Oblomovkans.
In his dream Oblomov saw not only an evening spent in this manner, but
whole weeks and months and years of such evenings. Never did anything
occur to interrupt the uniformity of that life, nor were the
Oblomovkans in any way wearied by it, since they could conceive no
other existence, and would have turned from any other with distaste.
Had there been imported into that existence any change due to
circumstances, they would have regretted the fact, and felt troubled
by the thought that to-morrow was not going to be precisely as to-day.
What wanted they with the diversity, the changes, the incidents, for
which others yearned? "Let others drink of that cup," said they; "but
for us Oblomovkans--no such thing. Let others live as they please."
Incident--even pleasing incident--they considered to bring disturbance
and fuss and worry and commotion in its train, so that one could not
sit quietly in one's seat and just talk and eat one's meals.
Therefore, as decade succeeded decade, the Oblomovkans dozed and
yawned, and indulged in good-humoured laughter at rustic jests, and
assembled in corners to relate of what they had dreamed during the
previous night. Had their dreams been unpleasant, the company at once
became thoughtful and nervous, and refrained from jesting. On the
other hand, had their dreams been of a prophetic nature, at once the
company grew cheerful or despondent, according as the visions had
promised sorrow or joy. Lastly, had their dreams called for the
consideration of some portent, the company proceeded to take such
active measures as might be necessary to deal with the situation.
Also, every one indulged in card-playing, games of "fools," and so
forth; while, as for the womenfolk, they would discuss the
neighbourhood, and pry not only into its family life and social
gaiety, but also into its secret ends and desires. About these they
would dispute, and then pass censure upon various persons (more
particularly upon unfaithful husbands), and relate details of
birthdays, christenings, namedays, and dinner parties, with the lists
of the invited and non-invited guests. Likewise they would show one
another various articles of their wardrobes, and the hostess would
proudly vaunt the merits of her sheets, her knitted garments, and her
lace of home manufacture. Yet at length even these things would begin
to pall; whereupon coffee, tea, and cakes would be served, and a
silence, broken only by desultory remarks, ensue.
Of course, also, there were certain rare occasions when these methods
of spending the time were interrupted by such happenings as the entire
household falling ill of a fever, or some member of it either tripping
over a stake in the dark or falling out of the hayloft or being struck
on the head by a beam which had slipped from the roof. Yet, as I say,
such events were rare, and when they occurred, every known and tried
domestic remedy was brought into play. The injured spot was rubbed
with ointment, a dose of holy water was administered, a prayer was
muttered--and all was well. On the other hand, a winter headache was
quite a common phenomenon, and in that case the household would retire
to bed, groans and sighs would resound from every room, one person
would wrap up his head in a cucumber poultice and a towel, another
place cranberries in his ears and inhale horseradish, a third walk
about in the frost with nothing on but his shirt, and a fourth,
half-conscious, roll about the floor. It was at regular periods of
once or twice a month that this happened, for the reason that the
Oblomovkans did not like to allow any superfluous heat to escape by
the chimney, but covered the stoves when the flames were rising high.
Consequently upon no single stove-couch or stove could a hand be laid
without danger of that hand being blistered.
Only once was the monotony of Oblomovkan life broken by a wholly
unexpected circumstance. The household, exhausted by the labours of
dinner, had assembled for tea, when there entered a local peasant who
had just been making an expedition to the town. Thrusting his hand
into his bosom, he with difficulty produced a much-creased letter,
addressed to the master of the house. Every one sat thunderstruck,
and even the master himself changed countenance. Not an eye was there
which did not dart glances at the missive. Not a nose was there which
was not strained in its direction.
"How unlooked for!" at length said the mistress of the household as
she recovered herself. "From whom can the letter have come?"
Old Oblomov took it, and turned it over in his hands, as though at a
loss what to do with the epistle.
"Where did you get it from?" he inquired of the peasant. "And who
gave it you?"
"I got it at the inn where I put up," replied the man. "Twice did
folk come from the post-office to inquire if any peasantry from
Oblomovka were there, since a letter was awaiting the barin. The
first time they came, I kept quiet, and the postman took the letter
away; but afterwards the deacon of Verklevo saw me, and they came and
gave me the letter, and made me pay five kopecks for it. I asked them
what I was to do with the letter, and they said that I was to hand it
to your Honour."
"Then at first you refused it?" the mistress remarked sharply.
"Yes, I refused it. What should we want with letters? We have no
need for them, nor had I any orders to take charge of such things. So
I was afraid to touch it. 'Don't you go too fast with that thing,' I
said to myself. Yet how the postman abused me! He would have
complained to the authorities had I left the letter where it was."
"Fool!" exclaimed the lady of the house.
"And from whom can it be?" said old Oblomov meditatively as he studied
the address. "Somehow I seem to know the handwriting."
Upon that the missive fell to being passed from one person to another;
and much guessing and discussion began. Finally the company had to
own itself nonplussed. The master of the house ordered his spectacles
to be fetched, and quite an hour and a half were consumed in searching
for the same; but at length he put them on, and then bethought him of
opening the letter.
"Wait a moment," said his wife, hastily arresting his hand. "Do not
break the seal. Who knows what the letter may contain? It may
portend something dreadful, some misfortune. To what have we not come
nowadays? To-morrow, or the day after, will be soon enough. The
letter will not walk away of itself."
So the letter was placed under lock and key, and tea passed round. In
fact, the document would have lain there for a year, had it not
constituted a phenomenon so unusual as to continue to excite the
Oblomovkans' curiosity. Both after tea and on the following day the
talk was of nothing else. At length things could no longer be borne,
and on the fourth day, the company being assembled, the seal was
diffidently broken, and old Oblomov glanced at the signature.
"Radistchev!" he exclaimed. "So the message is from Philip
Matveitch!"
"Oh! Ah! From him, indeed?" resounded on all sides. "To think that
he is actually alive! Glory be to God! And what does he say?"
Upon that old Oblomov started to read the letter aloud. It seemed
that Philip Matveitch desired him to forward the recipe for a certain
beer which was brewed at Oblomovka.
"Then send it, send it," exclaimed the chorus. "Yes, and also write
him an answer."
Two weeks elapsed.
"Really we must write that note," old Oblomov kept repeating. "Where
is the recipe?"
"Where is it? " retorted his wife. "Why, it still has to be looked
for. Wait a little. Why need we hurry? Should God be good, we shall
soon be having another festival, and eating flesh again. Let us write
then. I tell you, the recipe won't run away."
"Yes, I daresay it would be better to write when we have reached the
festival."
Sure enough, the said festival arrived, and again there was talk of
the letter. In fact, old Oblomov did in truth get himself ready to
write it. He shut himself up in his study, he put on his spectacles,
and he sat down to the table. Everything in the house was profoundly
quiet, since orders had been issued that the establishment was not to
stamp upon the floor, nor, indeed, to make a noise of any kind. "The
barin is writing," was said in much the same tone of respectful awe
that might have been used had a dead person been lying in the house.
Hardly had old Oblomov inscribed the words "Dear Sir"--slowly and
crookedly, and with a shaking hand, and as cautiously as though he had
been engaged in a dangerous task--when there entered to him his wife.
"I have searched and searched," she said, "but can find no recipe.
Nevertheless the bedroom wardrobe still remains to be ransacked, so
how can you write the letter now?"
"It ought to go by the next post," her husband remarked.
"And what will it cost to go?"
Old Oblomov produced an ancient calendar. "Forty kopecks," he said.
"What? You are going to throw away forty kopecks on such a trifle?"
she exclaimed. "We had far better wait until we are sending other
things also to the town. Let the peasants know about it."
"That might be better," agreed old Oblomov, tapping his pen against
the table. With that he replaced the pen in the inkstand, and took
off his spectacles.
"Yes, it might be better," he concluded. And to this day no one knows
how long Philip Matveitch had to wait for that recipe.
Also, there were times when old Oblomov actually took a book in his
hands. What book it might be he did not care, for he felt no actual
craving to read; he looked upon literature as a mere luxury which
could easily be indulged in, or be done without, even as one might
have a picture on one's wall, or one might not--one might go out for
an occasional walk, or one might not. Hence, as I say, he was
indifferent to the identity of a book, since he looked upon such
articles as mere instruments of distraction from ennui and lack of
employment. Also, he always adopted towards authors that
half-contemptuous attitude which used to be maintained by gentry of
the ancien régime; for, like many of his day, he considered a writer
of books to be a roisterer, a ne'er-do -well, a drunkard, a sort of
merry-andrew. Also, he would read aloud items of intelligence from
journals three years old--such items as, "It is reported from The
Hague that, on returning to the Palace from a short drive, the King
gazed at the assembled onlookers through his spectacles," or "At
Vienna such and such an Ambassador has just presented his Letter of
Credentials."
Again, there was a day when he read aloud the intelligence that a
certain work by a foreign writer had just been translated into
Russian.
"The only reason why they go in for translating such things," remarked
a small landowner who happened to be present, "is that they may
wheedle more money out of us dvoriané."
Meanwhile the little Ilya was engaged in journeying backwards and
forwards to Schtoltz's school. Every Monday, when he awoke, he felt
overcome with depression, should he happen to hear Vassika's rasping
voice shout aloud from the veranda: "Antipka, harness the piebald, as
the young barin has to drive over to the German's!" Yes, then Ilya's
heart would tremble, and he would repair sadly to his mother, who
would know why he did so, and begin to gild the pill, while secretly
sighing to herself at the thought that she was to be parted from the
lad for a whole week. Indeed, on such mornings he could scarcely be
given enough to eat, and scarcely could a sufficiency of buns and
cakes and pies and sweetmeats be made to take with him (the said
sufficiency being based upon an assumption that at the German's the
pupils fared far from richly).
"One couldn't overeat oneself there," said the Oblomovkans. "For
dinner one gets nothing but soup, roast, and cabbage, for tea only
cold meat, and for supper morgen fri. . .
However, there were Mondays when he did not hear Vassika's voice
ordering the piebald to be harnessed, and when his mother met him with
a smile and the pleasant tidings that he was not to go to school that
day, since the following Thursday would be a holiday, and it was not
worth while for him to make the journey to and fro for a stay only of
three days. At other times he would be informed that that week was
the Week of Kindred, and that therefore cake-baking, and not
book-learning, would be the order of the day. Or on a Monday morning
his mother would glance at him, and, say: "Your eyes look dull to-day.
Are you sure that you are well?" Then she would shake her head
dubiously, and though the crafty youngster would be in perfect health,
he would hold his tongue on the subject. Thereafter she would
continue: "You must stay at home this week, for God knows what might
happen to you at that other place." And in her decision she would be
confirmed by the whole of the rest of the household. True, these fond
parents were not blind to the value of education it was that they
realized only its external value. That is to say, they could not look
beyond the fact that education enabled folk to get on in the world so
far as the acquisition of rank, crosses, and money was concerned.
Certain evil rumours had arisen regarding the necessity of learning
not only one's letters, but also various branches of science which
until now had remained unknown to the world of Oblomovka; but, as I
say, the good folk of that place had only the dimmest, the remotest,
comprehension of any internal demand for education, and therefore
desired to secure for their little Ilya only certain showy advantages,
and no more--to wit, a fine uniform, and the getting of him into the
Civil Service (his mother even foresaw him become a provincial
governor!). Yet this, they thought, ought to be attained at as little
cost as possible, and by means of a covert evasion of the various
rocks and barriers which lay strewn about the path of enlightenment.
Yes, those rocks and barriers, they said, must be walked around, not
scaled; learning must be assimilated lightly, and not at the cost of
exhaustion both of body and mind. In their view the process need be
continued only until the little Ilya had obtained some sort of a
certificate to the effect that he had been through "a course of the
arts and sciences."
But to this Oblomovkan system old Schtoltz was wholly opposed; and
probably his German persistency would have carried the day, had he not
had to contend with difficulties even in his own camp. That is to
say, his son was accustomed to spoil young Oblomov by doing his
exercises for him, and prompting him in his translations. Also, young
Oblomov could clearly discern the differences between his home life
and life at school. At home, no sooner would he have awakened than he
would find Zakhar standing by his bed. Even as the nurse had done,
Zakhar would draw on for the lad his stockings, and put on his boots;
and if Master Ilya--now become a boy of fourteen--did not altogether
approve of Zakhar's performances he would nudge the valet on the nose
with his toe. Moreover, should the boy at any time want anything, he
had three or four servants to hasten to do his bidding; and in this
fashion he never learnt what it was to do a single thing for himself.
Yet in the end his parents' fond solicitude wearied him, for at no
time could he even cross the courtyard, or descend the staircase,
without hearing himself followed by shouts of "Where are you going to,
Ilya?" or "How can you do that?" or "You will fall and hurt yourself!"
Thus, pampered like an exotic plant in a greenhouse, he grew up slowly
and drowsily, and in a way which turned his energies inwards, and
gradually caused them to wither.
Yet on rare occasions he would still awake as fresh and vigorous and
cheerful as ever; he would awake feeling that an imp of mischief was
egging him on to climb the roof, or to go and roll in a field, or to
rush round the meadow where the hay was being cut, or to perch himself
on the top of a fence, or to start teasing the farm dogs--in short, to
take to running hither and thither and everywhere.
At length the thing was no longer to be borne; no longer could he
resist the imp's prompting. One winter's morning, capless, he leaped
from the veranda into the courtyard, and thence through the entrance
gates. Thereafter, rolling a snowball hastily in his hands, he darted
towards a crowd of boys. The fresh air cut his face, the frost nipped
his ears, his mouth and throat felt choked with cold, but in his
breast there was a great joy. He rushed forward as fast as his legs
could carry him, he shouted and he laughed. In two seconds he was in
the thick of the boys. One snowball he threw--it achieved a miss; a
second snowball he threw--it achieved the same; and just as he was
seizing a third his face became converted into one large clot of snow.
He fell, and, being unused to falling, hurt himself; yet still he
laughed merrily, though the tears had sprung to his eyes. Behind the
knot of youngsters ran two dogs, pulling at their clothes; for, as
every one knows, dogs cannot with equanimity see a human being
running. Thus the whole gang sped through the village--a noisy,
shouting, barking crew. At length the lads were caught, and justice
was meted out--to one on the head, to a second on the ears, to a third
on the rump. Also, the fathers of the culprits were threatened with
retribution. As for the young barin, he was hastily thrust into a
snatched-up greatcoat, then into his father's sheepskin, and, lastly,
into a couple of quilts; after which he was borne homeward in triumph.
The entire household had expected to behold him arrive in a moribund
condition; and indescribable was his parents' delight on seeing him
carried in both alive and unharmed. Yes, they gave thanks to God,
they dosed the boy with mint and elderberry wine and raspberry syrup,
and they kept him three days in bed--although the one thing that would
have done him any good would have been to have let him go out again
and play in the snow!
. . . . . .
Entering quietly, Zakhar tried to arouse the sleeper, but failed.
Suddenly a loud laugh proceeded from the neighbourhood of the door.
Oblomov started up.
"Schtoltz! Schtoltz!" he cried rapturously as he threw himself upon
the newcomer.
[St. Elias' Day:] Namely, that, should thunder occur on that day, the
whole of the ensuing year will be prosperous, since the peals
represent the saint's passage to heaven.
[the great white universe:] As distinguished from the black universe,
the unknown.
[kvass:] A liquor made from fermented bread crusts or fruit.
[sazhen:] The sazhen equals six English feet.
[winter headache:] Due to the fumes of the charcoal used for heating
purposes.
[dvoriané:] Squires, or gentry.
[morgen frei:] German black pudding.
[Week of the Kindred:] Week of the Dead.
Part 2 Chapter 1
OFTEN Oblomov's old school friend had endeavoured--though in vain--to
wean his comrade from the state of inertia in which he (Oblomov) was
plunged. The pair were discussing the same subject in Oblomov's
study.
"Once upon a time," said Schtoltz, "I remember you a slim, lively
young fellow. Have you forgotten our joint readings of Rousseau,
Schiller, Göethe, and Byron?"
"Have I forgotten them?" re-echoed Oblomov. "No. How could I forget
them? How I used to dream over those books, and to whisper to myself
my hopes for the future, and to make plans of all sorts!--though I
kept them from you for fear lest you would laugh at them. But that
expired at Verklevo; and never since has it been repeated. What is
the reason, I would ask? Never have I gone through any great mental
tempest or upheaval, my conscience is as clear as a mirror, and no
adverse stroke of fortune has occurred to destroy my self-conceit.
Yet for some reason or another I have gone to pieces." He sighed.
"You see, Andrei, at no point in my life have I been touched with a
fire which could either save me or destroy me. I have lived a life
different from that of others. With me it has not been a morning dawn
which, gradually broadening to a sultry, bustling noon, has faded,
imperceptibly, naturally, into eventide. No, I began life with a
quenching of the light of day, and, from the first moment that I
realized myself, realized also that I was on the wane. I realized
that fact as I sat at my desk in the chancellory, as I read, as I
consorted with friends, as I squandered my means upon Minia, as I
lounged on the Nevski Prospect, as I attended receptions where I was
welcomed as an eligible parti, as I wasted my life and brains in
fluctuating between town and country. Even my self-conceit--upon what
was it flung away? Upon figuring in clothes made by a good tailor,
upon gaining the entrée to well-known houses, upon having my hand
shaken by Prince P---! Yet self-conceit ought to be the very salt of
life. Whither is mine gone? Either I have never understood the life
of which I speak or it was never suited to me. Oh, that I had never
known or seen it, that no one had ever pointed it out to me For
yourself, you entered and left my orbit like a bright, swift comet;
and when you were gone I forgot everything, and began to fade."
As Schtoltz listened to Oblomov's words there was no trace of a
contemptuous smile on his features.
"Not long ago," resumed Oblomov, "you said that my face had lost its
freshness and colour. Yes, that is so. I am like a ragged, cast-off
garment--though less from the effect of weather and wear and tear than
from the fact that during the past twelve years there has lain within
me a light that has ever been seeking an outlet, but has been doomed
to illumine only its own prison. Now, therefore, unable to gain its
freedom, it is becoming altogether extinguished. Am I alone in this,
however? Look around you. The name of the tribe to which I belong is
legion."
"Nevertheless, I intend to take you travelling with me," remarked
Schtoltz, rising. "We will start to-morrow. It must be done now or
never." With that he went to bed.
"Now or never." Somehow to Oblomov the words seemed a sort of threat.
He approached his dusty writing-table, and took up a pen. Of ink
there was none, nor yet a single scrap of writing-paper. Mechanically
and at random he traced some letters in the dust with his finger.
There resulted the word Oblomovstchina. He obliterated it with a
quick movement of his sleeve. Often in his dreams had he seen the
word written in letters of fire on the ceiling, even as once
Belshazzar saw characters traced on the wall of his banqueting-room.
"Now or never." Oblomov listened to this last despairing call of his
reason and his energy, and, weighing in the balance what little
volition still remained to him, considered to what end he could best
devote that sorry fragment. Which was he to do? To go forward or to
stand still? To go forward would mean divesting, not only his
shoulders, but also his intellect, his soul, of his dressing-gown; it
would mean sweeping away, not only from his chamber walls, but also
from his eyes, the dust and the cobwebs. Yet how was he to take the
first step necessary? Where was he to begin? He remembered
Schtoltz's words : "Go to Oblomovka, and there learn what sowing and
grinding mean, and why the peasant is poor or rich. Walk the fields,
attend the local elections, visit the mills, and linger by the river
wharves."
Yes, that was what Schtoltz had said. But it would mean going
forward, and going forward unceasingly. In that case farewell to the
poetic ideal of life! Such a course would connote work in a smithery
rather than life: it would entail a continual round of heat and of
clatter. What would be the good of it? Would it not be better to
stand still? To stand still would merely mean occasionally putting on
a shirt inside out, dinners with Tarantiev, thinking as little as
possible of anything, leaving "A Voyage to Africa" unread to the end,
and attaining a peaceful old age in the flat of which Tarantiev had
spoken. "Now or never." "To be or not to be." Oblomov rose from his
chair, but, failing at once to insert his foot into a slipper, sat
down again.
Two weeks later Schtoltz departed for England, after exacting from
Oblomov a pledge to join him later in Paris, Oblomov even went to the
length of procuring a passport, ordering an expensive travelling coat,
and purchasing a cap. The furniture of the flat was to be removed to
the quarters of Tarantiev's crony in the Veaborg Quarter, and stored
in the three rooms until its owner's return.
A month went by--three months; yet Oblomov still did not start.
Schtoltz, who had reached Paris long ago, continued to send him letter
after letter, but they remained unanswered. Why so? Was it because
the ink in the inkstand had become dried up and no writing-paper was
available? No; both ink, pens, and paper were present in abundance.
Indeed, more than once Oblomov sat down to write, and did so fluently,
and, at times, as expressively and eloquently as he had done in the
days when, with Schtoltz, he had dreamed of the strenuous life, and of
travelling. Likewise he had taken to rising at seven o'clock in the
morning, and to reading, and to carrying books about with him. Also,
his face had lost its look of dreaminess, weariness, ennui--there was
colour in his cheek, a sparkle in his eye, and an air almost of
adventurousness--at least, almost of self-assurance--about his whole
bearing. Lastly, no longer was the dressing-gown to be seen, for
Tarantiev had carried it off to his friend's flat, along with the rest
of Oblomov's effects. Thus Oblomov wore better clothes than had been
his wont, and even sang cheerfully as he moved about. Why so? The
reason was that there had come into his life two friends of
Schtoltz's, in the shape of a pretty girl named Olga Sergievna
Ilyinitch and her aunt. On his first visit to them he was overcome
with constraint. "How gladly I would take off my gloves!" he thought
to himself. "And how hot the room is! And how unused to this sort of
thing I have grown!"
"Besides, she will keep looking at me," was his further reflection as
diffidently he scanned his clothes. He even wiped his face with his
handkerchief, lest a smut should have settled on his nose. Also, he
touched his tie, to make sure that its folds had not come undone, as
had sometimes happened with him. But no--all was as it should be.
Yet she would persist in regarding him attentively. Next, a footman
tendered him a cup of tea, with a plate of biscuits. He tried to
subdue his nervousness, and to unbend; but in the act of unbending he
seized such a handful of cracknels, biscuits, and sugared buns that
the girl tittered and the rest of those present gazed at the pile with
unconcealed interest.
"My God, she is still looking at me!" he thought to himself. "What on
earth am I to do with all these biscuits?"
Without looking, he could tell that Olga had risen from her seat and
moved to another corner. This helped to relieve his breast of a
certain amount of weight. None the less she continued to contemplate
him, in order to see what he would do with the confectionery.
"Probably I had best eat them as quickly as possible," he thought;
with which he fell to hurriedly selecting one after another. Luckily
all were of the sort which melts in the mouth. When only two of them
remained he heaved a sigh of relief, and decided to glance towards the
corner where he knew Olga to be seated. Horrors! She was standing by
a bust, with one hand resting on its pedestal, and her eyes closely
observing him! Nay, she had even come out of her corner to get a
closer view of him! Without doubt she must have noted his awkwardness
with the biscuits!
True, at supper she sat at the other end of the table, and ate and
talked as though she were in no way concerned with him; yet never once
did he throw a timid glance in her direction (in the hope that she was
not looking his way) but straightway he encountered her gaze--a gaze
which, though good-humoured, was also charged with curiosity. That
was enough. He hastened to take leave of her aunt, who invited him to
come and dine another day. He bowed, and moved away across the
drawing-room without raising his eyes. Presently he encountered a
screen, with behind it, the grand piano. He looked again--and behold,
behind the screen was seated Olga! She was still gazing at him with
intent curiosity. Also, she seemed to him to be smiling.
"Certainly Andrei has often told me that I put on pairs of odd socks,
and my shirt inside out," he reflected as he drove home. From that
moment he could not get Olga's glance out of his head. In bed he lay
on his back and tried to adopt the most comfortable attitudes; yet
still he could not sleep. . . .
One fine morning Tarantiev came and carried off the rest of Oblomov's
furniture; with the result that its owner spent three such days as he
had never before experienced--days during which he was bedless and
sofa-less, and therefore driven to dine at the house of Olga's aunt.
Suddenly he noticed that opposite the aunt's house there stood an
untenanted villa. Consequently he hired it (furnished) at sight, and
went to live there. Thereafter he spent his whole time with Olga--he
read with her, he culled flowers with her, he walked by the lake and
over the hills with her. Yes, he, Oblomov! How came this about? It
came about thus.
On the evening of the fateful dinner-party at the aunt's house Oblomov
experienced the same torture during the meal as he had done on the
previous occasion. Every word that he spoke he uttered with an acute
sense that over him, like a searchlight, there was hovering that
glance, and that it was burning and irritating him, and that it was
stimulating his nerves and blood. Surely, on the balcony, he thought,
he would be able, when ensconced behind a cloud of tobacco smoke, to
succeed in momentarily concealing himself from that silent, that
insistent gaze?
"What does it all mean?" he said to himself as he rocked himself to
and fro. "Why, it is sheer torture! Have I made myself ridiculous?
At no one else would she dare to stare as she does at me. I suppose
it is because I am quieter than the rest. However, I will make an
agreement with her. I will tell her, in so many words, that her eyes
are dragging my very soul out of my body."
Suddenly she appeared on the threshold of the balcony. He handed her
a chair, and she took a seat beside him.
"Are you so very ennuyé?" she inquired. "Ennuyé, yes--but not much
so. I have pursuits of my own."
"Ah? Schtoltz tells me that you are engaged in drawing up a scheme of
some sort?"
"Yes. I want to live upon my estate, and am making a few preparations
for doing so."
"And you are going abroad?"
"Undoubtedly--as soon as ever Schtoltz is ready to accompany me.
"Shall you be very glad to go?"
"Yes, very."
He looked at her. A smile was hovering on her face, and illuminating
her eyes, and gradually spreading over her cheeks. Only her lips
remained as pressed together as usual. He lacked the spirit to
continue his lies calmly.
"However, I--I am rather a lazy person, he began. "But, but--"
Suddenly he felt vexed to think that she should have extracted from
him a confession of his lethargy. "What is she to me?" he thought.
"Am I afraid of her?"
"Lazy?" she exclaimed with a scarcely perceptible touch of archness.
"What? A man be lazy? That passes my comprehension."
"Why should it?" was his inward comment. "It is all simple enough. I
have taken to sitting at home more and more, and therefore Schtoltz
thinks that I--"
"But I expect you write a great deal?" she went on. "And have you
read much?" Somehow her gaze seemed very intent.
"No, I cannot say that I have." The words burst from him in a sudden
fear lest she should see fit to put him through a course of literary
examination.
"What do you mean?" she inquired, laughing. Then he too laughed.
"I thought that you were going to cross-question me about some novel
or another," he explained. "But, you see, I never read such things."
"Then you thought wrong. I was only going to ask you about a few
books of travel."
He glanced at her quickly. Her lips were still compressed, but the
rest of her face was smiling.
"I must be very careful with her," he reflected.
"What do you read?" she asked with seeming curiosity.
"It happens that I am particularly fond of books of travel," he
replied.
"Travels in Africa, for instance?" There was quiet demureness in the
tone. He reddened at the not wholly unreasonable conjecture that she
was aware not only of what he read but of how he read.
"And are you also musical?" she continued, in order to relieve him of
his embarrassment. At this moment Schtoltz (who had now returned from
abroad) appeared on the scene.
"Ha, Ilya!" he cried. "I have told Olga Sergievna that you adore
music, and that to-night she must sing something-- 'Casta Diva,' for
example."
"Why did you speak for me at all?" protested Oblomov. "I am by no
means an adorer of music."
"What?" Schtoltz exclaimed. "Why, the man is offended! I introduce
him as a person of taste, and here is he stumbling over himself to
destroy his good reputation!"
"I am only declining the rôle of connoisseur," said Oblomov. "'Tis
too difficult and risky a rôle. Sometimes I can listen with pleasure
to a cracked barrel-organ, and its tunes stick in my memory; while at
other times I leave the Opera before the piece is half over. It all
depends upon the mood in which I am. In fact, there are moments when
I could close my ears even to Mozart."
"Then it is clear that you do love music," said Olga.
"Sing him something," requested Schtoltz.
"But suppose that Monsieur Oblomov were, at this very moment, to be
feeling inclined to close his ears?" she said as she turned to him.
"I suppose I ought to utter some compliment or another," he replied.
"But I cannot do so, and I would not, even if I could."
"Why?"
"Because," was Oblomov's naïve rejoinder, "things would be so awkward
for me if I were to find that you sing badly."
"Even as, the other day, you found things awkward with the biscuits?"
she retorted before she could stop herself. The next moment she
reddened as though she would have given worlds to have been able to
recall her words. "Pardon me," she added. "I ought not to have said
that."
Oblomov had been unprepared, and was quite taken aback.
"That was a cruel advantage," he murmured.
"No--only a small revenge (and an unpremeditated one) for your failure
to have had a compliment ready."
"Then perhaps I will have one ready when I have heard you sing."
"You wish me to sing, then?"
"No; he wishes it." Oblomov pointed to Schtoltz.
"But what of yourself?"
Oblomov shook his head deprecatingly.
"I could not wish for what I have not yet experienced," he said.
"You are very rude, Ilya," put in Schtoltz. "See what comes of
lolling about at home and confining your efforts to having your socks
put on for you."
"Pardon me," said Oblomov quickly, and without giving him time to
finish. "I should find it no trouble to say: 'I shall be most glad,
most delighted, to hear you sing, for of course you sing perfectly.'
So," he went on, 'it will afford me the very greatest possible
pleasure.' But do you really think it necessary?"
"At least you might express a desire that I should sing--if only out
of curiosity.
"I dare not do so," replied Oblomov. "You are not an actress."
"Then it shall be for you that I will sing," she said to Schtoltz.
"While you, Ilya," he added, "can be getting your compliment ready."
Evening was closing in, and the lamp had been lit. Moonlike, it cast
through the ivy-covered trellis a light so dim that the dusk still
veiled the outlines of Olga's face and figure--it still shrouded them,
as it were, in crêpe; while the soft, strong voice, vibrating with
nervous tension, came ringing through the darkness with a note of
mystery. At Schtoltz's prompting she sang several arias and romances,
of which some expressed suffering, with a vague forecast of joy, while
others expressed joy, coupled with a lurking germ of sorrow.
As Oblomov listened he could scarcely restrain his tears or the cry of
ecstasy that was almost bursting from his soul. In fact, he would
have undertaken the tour abroad if thereby he could have remained
where he was at that moment, and then gone.
"Have I pleased you to-night?" she inquired of Schtoltz.
"Ask, rather, Oblomov," he replied. "Confess now, Ilya: how long is
it since you felt as you are feeling at this moment?"
"Yet he might have felt like that this morning if 'a cracked
barrel-organ' had happened to pass his window," put in Olga--but so
kindly as to rob the words of their sarcasm.
"He never keeps his windows open," remarked Schtoltz. "Consequently
he could not possibly hear what is going on outside."
That night Oblomov was powerless to sleep. He paced the room in a
mood of thoughtful despondency, and at dawn left the house to roam the
city, with his head and his heart full of God only knows what feelings
and reflections
Three days later he called again at the aunt's.
"I want you," said Olga, "to feel thoroughly at home here."
"Then pray do not look at me as you are doing now, and as you have
always done."
Instantly her glance lost its usual expression of curiosity, and
became wholly softened to kindness.
"Why do you mind my looking at you so much?" she asked.
"I do not know. Somehow your gaze seems to draw from me everything
that I would rather people did not learn--you least of all."
"Why so? You are a friend of Schtoltz's, and he is a friend of mine,
and therefore--"
"And therefore there is no reason why you should know as much about me
as he does," concluded Oblomov.
"No, there is no reason. But at least there is a possibility that I
may do so."
"Yes--thanks to his talkativeness! Indeed a poor service!"
"Have you, then, any secrets to conceal--or even crimes?" With a
little laugh she edged away from him.
"Perhaps," he said with a sigh.
"Yes, to put on odd socks is a grave crime," she remarked with demure
timidity.
Oblomov seized his hat.
"I will not stand this!" he cried. "Yet you want me to feel at home
here! As for Schtoltz, I detest him! He told you about the socks, I
suppose?"
"Nay, nay," she said. "Pardon me this once, and I will try to look at
you in quite a different way. As a matter of fact, 'tis you who are
looking at me in rather an odd fashion."
True enough, he was gazing into her kindly, grey-blue eyes--he was
doing so simply because he could not help it--and thinking to himself
that never in all the world had he seen a maiden so beautiful.
"Something seems to pass from her into myself," he reflected. "And
that something is making my heart beat and boil. My God, what a joy
to the eye she is!"
"The important question," she went on, "is how to preserve you from
feeling ennuyé."
"You can do that by singing to me again."
"Ah, I was expecting that compliment!" The words came from her in a
sudden burst as of pleasure. "Do you know, had you not uttered that
gasp after I had finished singing the other evening, I should never
have slept all night--I should have cried my very eyes out."
"Why?" he asked.
"I do not know. I merely know that that time I sang as I had never
done before. Do not ask me to sing now, however--I could not do it."
Nevertheless she did sing to him again; and, ah! what did that song
not voice? It seemed to be charged with her very soul.
As she finished, his face was shining with the happiness of a spirit
which has been moved to its utmost depths.
"Come!" she said. "Why do you look at me like that?"
Yet she knew why he was doing so, and a modest touch of triumph that
she could so greatly have affected him filled her soul.
"Look at yourself in the mirror," she went on, "and you will see that
your eyes are shining, and that--yes, really!--they have tears in
them. How deeply you must feel music!"
No--it is not music that I am feeling," he replied slowly; "but--but
love!"
Her glance met his, and instantly she saw that he had uttered the word
in spite of himself, that the word had got him in its power, and that
the word had voiced the truth.
Recovering himself, he picked up his hat, and left the room. When he
had gone she remained standing like a statue by the piano--her eyes
cast down, and her breast rising and falling tumultuously.
[Oblomovstchina:] The disease of Oblomovka. See later.
Part 2 Chapter 2
FROM that time forth she lived in him alone, while he, for his part,
racked his brains to avoid incurring the loss of her esteem. Whenever
she detected in his soul--and she could probe that soul very
deeply--the least trace of its former characteristics, she would work
for him to heap himself with reproaches for his lethargy and fear of
life. Just as he was about to yawn, as he was actually opening his
mouth for the purpose, her astonished glance would transfix him, and
cause his mouth to snap with a click which jarred his teeth. Still
more did he hasten to resume his alacrity whenever he perceived that
his lassitude was communicating itself to her, and threatening to
render her cold and contemptuous. Instantly he would undergo a
revival of strenuous activity; and then the shadow between them would
disappear, and mutual sympathy once more beat in strong, clear accord.
Yet this solicitude on his part had not, as yet, its origin in the
magic ring of love. Indeed, the effect of his charmed toils was
negative rather than positive. True, he no longer slept all day--on
the contrary, he rode, read, walked, and even thought of resuming his
writing and his agricultural schemes; yet the ultimate direction, the
inmost significance, of his life still remained confined to the sphere
of good intentions. Particularly disturbing did he find it whenever
Olga plied him with some particular question or another, and demanded
of him, as of a professor, full satisfaction of her curiosity. This
occurred frequently, and arose not out of pedantry on her part, but
out of a desire to know the right and the wrong of things.
At times a given question would absorb her even to the point of
forgetting her consideration for Oblomov. For instance, on one
occasion, when she had besought his opinion concerning double stars,
and he was incautious enough to refer her to Herschel, he was
dispatched to purchase the great authority's book, and commanded to
read it through, and to explain the same to her full satisfaction. On
another occasion he was rash enough to let slip a word or two
concerning various schools of painting; wherefore he had to undergo
another week's reading and explaining, and also to pay sundry visits
to the Hermitage Museum. In the end how he trembled whenever she
asked him a question!
"Why do you not say something?" she would say to him. "Surely it
cannot be that the subject wearies you?" "No, but how I love you!" he
would reply, as though awakening from a trance; to which she would
retort--"Do you really? But that is not what I have just asked you."
On another occasion he said to her--"Cannot you see what is taking
place in me? To me, speaking is a difficulty. Give me your hand,
give me your hand! There seems to be something hindering me,
something weighing me down. It is a something that is like the great
rock which oppresses a man during deep sorrow. And, strangely enough,
the effect of it is the same whether I happen to be sad or gay.
Somehow my breath seems to hurt me as I draw it, and occasionally I
come near to weeping. Yet, like a man overcome with grief, I feel
that I should be lightened and relieved if I could weep. What, think
you, is amiss with me?" She looked at him with a smile of happiness
which nothing could disturb. Evidently no weight was pressing upon
her heart.
"Shall I tell you?" she said.
"Yes."
"You are in love."
He kissed her hand.
"And you?" he asked. "Are you in love?"
"In love?" she repeated. " I do not like the term for myself. I like
you: that is better."
"'I like you'?" he re-echoed. "But a mother or a father or a nurse or
even a dog may be liked: the phrase may be used as a garment, even as
can, can--"Even as can an old dressing-gown," she suggested with a
smile. Presently she added--"Whether I am actually in love with you
or not I hardly know. Perhaps it is a stage that has not yet arrived.
All I know is that I have never liked father or mother or nurse or dog
as I like you. I feel lost without you. To be parted from you for a
short while makes me sorry; to be parted from you for a long while
makes me sad; and, were you to die, I should wear mourning for the
rest of my life, and never again be able to smile. To me such love is
life, and life is--"
"Yes?"
"Is a duty, an obligation. Consequently love also is a duty. God has
sent me that duty, and has bid me perform it." As she spoke she raised
her eyes to heaven.
"Who can have inspired her with these ideas?" Oblomov thought to
himself. "Neither through experience nor through trial nor through
'fire and smoke' can she have attained this clear, simple conception
of life and of love."
"Then, since there is joy in life, is there also suffering?" he asked
aloud.
"I do not know," she replied. "That lies beyond my experience as much
as it lies beyond my understanding."
"But how well I understand it!"
"Ah!" she said merrily. "What glances you throw at me sometimes!
Even my aunt has noticed it."
"But how can there be joy in love if it never brings one moments of
ecstatic delight?"
"What?" she replied with a glance at the scene around her. "Is not
all this so much ecstatic delight?" She looked at him, smiled, and
gave him her hand. "Do you think," she continued, "that presently I
shall not be sorry when you take your leave? Do you think that I
shall not go to bed the earlier in order that I may the sooner fall
asleep, and cheat the wearisome night, and be able to see you again in
the morning?"
The light in Oblomov's face had become brighter and brighter with each
successive question, and his gaze more and more suffused with
radiance.
Part 2 Chapter 3
NEXT morning, however, he rose pale and sombre. There were traces of
sleeplessness on his features, wrinkles on his brow, and a lack of
fire and eagerness in his eyes. Once upon a time he would have sunk
back upon the pillow after drinking his tea, but now he had grown out
of the habit, and contented himself with resting his elbow where his
head had just been lying. Something in him was working strongly; but
that something was not love. True, Olga's image was still before him,
but only at a distance, and in a mist, and shorn of its rays, like
that of some stranger. With aching eyes he gazed at it for a moment
or two, and then sighed.
"To live as God wills, and not as oneself wills, is a wise rule," he
murmured. "Nevertheless--"
"Clearly that is so," presently he went on. "Otherwise, one would
fall into a chaos of contradictions such as no human mind, however
daring and profound, could hope to resolve. Yesterday one has wished,
to-day one attains the madly longed-for object, and to-morrow one will
blush to think that one ever desired it. Therefore one will fall to
cursing life. And all because of a proud, independent striding
through existence and a wilful 'I will'! No; rather does one need to
feel one's way, to close one's eyes, to avoid becoming either
intoxicated with happiness or inclined to repine because it has
escaped one. Yes, that is life. Who was it first pictured life as
happiness and gratification? The fool! 'Life is a duty,' says Olga.
'Life is a grave obligation which must be fulfilled as such.'" He
heaved a profound sigh.
"No, I cannot visit Olga to-day," he went on. "My eyes are now open,
and I see my duty before me. Better part with her now, while it is
still possible, than later, when I shall have sworn to part with her
no more."
How had this mood of his come about? What wind had suddenly affected
him? How had it brought with it these clouds? Wherefore was he now
for assuming such a grievous yoke? Only last night he had looked into
Olga's soul, and seen there a radiant world and a smiling destiny;
only last night he had read both her horoscope and his own. What had
since happened?
Frequently, in summer, one goes to sleep while the weather is still
and cloudless, and the stars are glimmering softly. "How beautiful
the countryside will look to-morrow under the bright beams of
morning!" one thinks to oneself. "And how glad one will be to dive
into the depths of the forest and seek refuge from the heat!" Then
suddenly one awakes to the beating of rain, to the sight of grey,
mournful clouds, to a sense of cold and damp.
In Oblomov's breast the poison was working swiftly and vigorously. In
thought he reviewed his life, and for the hundredth time felt his
heart ache with repentance and regret for what he had lost. He kept
picturing to himself what, by now, he would have been had he strode
boldly ahead, and lived a fuller and a broader life, and exerted his
faculties; whence be passed to the question of his present condition,
and of the means whereby Olga had contrived to become fond of him, and
of the reason why she still was so. "Is she not making a mistake?"
was a thought which suddenly flashed through his mind like lightning;
and as it did so the lightning seemed to strike his heart, and to
shatter it. He groaned with the pain. "Yes, she is making a
mistake," he kept saying again and again. "She merely loves me as she
works embroidery on canvas. In a quiet, leisurely manner a pattern
has evolved itself, and she has turned it over, and admired it. Soon
she will lay it aside, and forget all about it. Yes, her present
affection is a mere making ready to fall in love, a mere experiment of
which I am the subject, for the reason that I chanced to be the first
subject to come to hand." So he collated the circumstances, and
compared them. Never would she have noticed him at all, had not
Schtoltz pointed him out, and infected her young, impressionable heart
with sympathy for his (Oblomov's) position, and therefore implanted in
her a desire to see if possibly she could shake that dreamy soul from
its lethargy before leaving it once more to its own devices.
"Yes, that is how the case stands," he said to himself with an access
of revulsion. He rose and lit a candle with a trembling hand. "'Tis
just that and nothing more. Her heart was ready to accept love--it
was tensely awaiting it--and I happened to fall in her way, and at the
same time to fall into a blunder. Only would some one else need to
arrive for her to renounce that blunder. As soon as ever she saw that
some one else she would turn from me with horror. In fact, I am
stealing what belongs to another; I am no better than a thief. My
God, to think that I should have been so blind!"
Glancing into the mirror, he saw himself pale, dull, and sallow.
Involuntarily he pictured to his mind those handsome young fellows who
would one day come her way. Suddenly she would take fire, glance at
him, and--burst out laughing! A second time he glanced into the
mirror. No, he was not the type with which women could fall in love!
He flung himself down upon the bed, and buried his face in the pillow.
"Forgive me, Olga!" he murmured. "And may you always be happy!"
He gave orders that he was to be reported as "not at home" to any one
who might call from the Ilyinskis' house. Then he sat down to write
Olga a letter. He wrote it swiftly. In fact, the pen flew over the
pages. And when he had finished the missive he was surprised to find
that his spirits felt cheered, and his mind easier.
"Why so?" he reflected. "Probably because I have put into what I have
just written the whole sorrow of my heart."
Next, he dispatched the letter by the hand of Zakhar, and, leaving the
house, turned into the park, and seated himself on the grass. Among
the turf-shoots ants were scurrying hither and thither, and jostling
one another, and parting again. From above, the scene looked like the
commotion in a human market-place--it showed the same bustle, the same
congestion, the same swarm of population. Here and there, too, a
bumble bee buzzed over a flower, and then crept into its chalice,
while a knot of flies had glued themselves to a drop of sap on the
trunk of a lime-tree, in the foliage a bird was repeating an
ever-insistent note (as though calling to its mate), and a couple of
butterflies were tumbling through the air in a giddy, fluttering,
intricate movement which resembled a waltz. Everywhere from the
herbage strong scents could be detected arising; everywhere there
could be heard a ceaseless chirping and twittering.
Suddenly he saw Olga approaching. Walking very quietly, she was
wiping her eyes with a handkerchief as she did so. He had not
expected those tears. Somehow they seemed to sear his heart. He rose
and ran to meet her.
"Olga, Olga!" were his first tender words.
She started, looked at him with an air of astonishment, and turned
away. He followed her.
"You are weeping?" he said.
"Yes, and 'tis you have made me do so," she replied, while her form
shook with sobs. "But it is beyond your power to comfort me."
"That miserable letter!" he ejaculated, suddenly becoming full of
remorse.
For answer she opened a basket which she was carrying, took from it
the letter, and handed it to him.
"Take it away," she said. "The sight of it will only make me weep
more bitterly."
He stuffed it silently into his pocket, and, with head bent, seated
himself beside her.
"Give me credit for good intentions," he urged. "In any case the
letter was evidence only of my care for your happiness--of the fact
that I was thinking of it in advance, and was ready to sacrifice
myself on its account. Do you think that I wrote the message
callously--that inwardly I was not shedding tears the whole time? Why
should I have acted as I did?"
"Why, indeed?" she interrupted. "For the reason that you wished to
surprise me here, and to see whether I was weeping, and how bitterly.
Had you really meant the letter as you say, you would be making
preparations to go abroad instead of meeting me as you are now doing.
Last night you wanted my 'I love you'; to-day you want to see my
tears; and to-morrow, I daresay, you will be wishing that I were
dead!"
"How can you wrong me like that? Believe me, I would give half my
life to see smiles on your face instead of tears."
"Yes--now that you have seen a woman weeping on your account. But no;
you have no heart. You say that you had no desire to make me weep.
Had that been so, you would not have acted as you have done."
"Then what ought I to do?" he asked tenderly. "Will you let me beg
your pardon?"
"No; only children beg pardon, or persons who have jostled some one in
a crowd. Moreover, even when granted, such pardon is worth nothing."
"But what if the letter should be true, and your affection for me all
a mistake?" he suggested.
"You are afraid, then?--you are afraid of falling into a well?--you
are afraid lest some day I should hurt you by ceasing to be fond of
you?"
"Would I could sink into the ground!" he reflected. The pain was
increasing in proportion as he divined Olga's thoughts.
"On the other hand," she went on, "suppose you were to weary of love,
even as you have wearied of books, of work, and of the world in
general? Suppose that, fearing no rival, you were to go to sleep by
my side (as you do on your sofa at home), and that my voice were to
become powerless to wake you? Suppose that your present swelling of
heart were to pass away, and your dressing-gown come to acquire more
value in your eyes than myself? Often and often do such questions
prevent my sleeping; yet I do not, on that account, trouble you with
conjectures as to the future. Always I hope for better things, for,
with me, happiness has cast out fear. Only for one thing have I long
been sitting and waiting--namely, for happiness; until at length I had
come to believe that I had found it. . . . Even if I have made a
mistake, at least this "--and she laid her hand upon her heart--" does
not convict me of guilt. God knows that I never desired such a fate!
And I had been so happy!" She broke off abruptly.
"Then be happy again," urged Oblomov.
"No. Rather, go you whither you have always been wishing to go," she
said softly.
"You are wiser than I am," he murmured, twisting a sprig of acacia
between his fingers.
"No, I am simpler and more daring than you. What are you afraid of?
Do you really think that I should cease to love you?"
"With you by my side I fear nothing," he replied. "With you by my
side nothing terrible can fall to my lot."
Part 3 Chapter 1
OBLOMOV'S face beamed as he walked home. His blood was boiling, and a
light was shining in his eyes. He entered his room--and at once the
radiance disappeared as his eyes, full of disgusted astonishment,
became glued to one particular spot. That particular spot was the
arm-chair, wherein was snugly ensconced Tarantiev.
"Why is it I never find you here?" the visitor asked sternly. "Why
are you always gadding about? That old fool Zakhar has quite got out
of hand. I asked him for a morsel of food and a glass of vodka, and
he refused me both!"
"I have been for a walk in the park," replied Oblomov coldly. For the
moment he had forgotten the murky atmosphere wherein he had spent so
much of his life. And now, in a twinkling, Tarantiev had brought him
tumbling from the clouds! His immediate thought was that the visitor
might insist on remaining to dinner, and so prevent him from paying
his visit to Olga and her aunt.
"Why not come and take a look at that flat?" went on Tarantiev.
"Because there is no need," replied Oblomov, avoiding his
interlocutor's eye. "I have decided not to move."
"Not to move?" exclaimed Tarantiev threateningly. "Not when I have
hired the place for you, and you have signed the lease?"
This led Oblomov to remember that, on the very day of his removal from
town to the country villa, he had signed, without previously perusing
it, a document which his present visitor had submitted to him.
"Nevertheless," he remarked, " I shall not want the flat. I am going
abroad."
"I am sure you are not," retorted Tarantiev coolly. "What is more,
the sooner you hand over to me a half-year's rent, the better. Your
new landlady does not care for such tricks to be played upon her. I
have paid the money on your behalf, and I require to be repaid."
"Where did you contrive to get the money from?"
"That has nothing to do with you. As a matter of fact, I had an old
debt repaid me. A better flat you could not find in all the city."
"Nevertheless I do not want it. It lies too far from--from--"
"From where? From the centre of the city?"
Oblomov forbore to specify what he meant, but merely remarked that he
should not be dining at home that evening.
"Then hand me over the rent, and the devil take you!" exclaimed
Tarantiev.
"I possess no money at all. As it is, I shall have to borrow some."
"Well, repay me at least my cab fare," insisted the visitor. "It was
only three roubles."
"Where is the cabman? Why has he charged you so much?"
"I dismissed him long ago. I may add that the fare home is another
three roubles."
"By the coach you could travel for half a rouble." However, Oblomov
tendered Tarantiev four roubles, which the man at once pocketed.
"Also, I have expended some seven roubles on your account," went on
Tarantiev. "Besides, you might as well advance me something towards
the price of a dinner. Roadside inns are dear. As a rule they fleece
one of five roubles."
Silently Oblomov handed him another rouble, in the hope that the man
would now depart; but Tarantiev was not to be so easily shaken off.
"And also you might order Zakhar to bring me a snack now," he said.
"But I thought you intended to dine at an inn?"
"Yes, to dine, but at the moment the time is two o'clock, and no
more."
Oblomov issued the necessary orders. On receiving them, Zakhar looked
darkly at Tarantiev.
"We have no food ready," he said. "Also, where are my master's shirt
and jacket?"
"Shirt and jacket? Why, I gave them back to you long ago. I stuffed
them into your own hands, and you bundled them away into a corner.
Yet you come asking me where they are!"
"Also, what about a floorbrush and two cups which you carried off?"
persisted Zakhar.
"Floorbrush? What floorbrush?" retorted Tarantiev. "Go and get me
something to eat, you old fool!"
"We have not a single morsel in the house," said Zakhar; "and also
there is nobody to cook it." With which he withdrew.
Tarantiev looked about him, and, perceiving Oblomov to be possessed
both of a hat and a cap, attempted unsuccessfully to borrow the former
for the remainder of the summer, and then took his leave.
When he had gone Oblomov sat plunged in thought. He recognized that
his bright, cloudless holiday of love was over, and that workaday love
had now become the order of the day, and that already it was so
completely entering into his life's ordinary tendencies that things
were beginning to lose their rainbow colours.
"Indeed," he reflected, "this morning may have seen the extinction of
the last roseate ray of love's festival--so that henceforth my life is
to be warmed rather than lighted. Yes, life will swallow up love,
although secretly it will remain moved by its powerful springs, and
its manifestations be of an invariably simple, everyday nature. Yes,
the poem is fading, and stern prose is to follow--to follow with a
drab series of incidents which shall comprise a marriage ceremony, a
journey to Oblomovka, the building of a house, an application to the
local council, the laying out of roads, an endless transaction of
business with peasants, a number of improvements, harvests, and so
forth, the frequent spectacle of the bailiff's anxious face, elections
to the council of nobles, and sundry sittings on the local bench."
Somewhere he could see Olga beaming upon him, and singing Casta Diva,
and then giving him a hasty kiss before he went forth to work, or to
the town, or to interview the bailiff. Guests would call (a no very
comforting prospect!), and they would talk about the wine which each
happened to be brewing in his vats, and about the number of arshins of
cloth which each happened to have rendered to the Treasury. What
would this amount to? What was it he was promising for himself? Was
it life? Whether life or not, it would have to be lived as though it,
and it alone, constituted existence. At least it would be an
existence that would find favour with Schtoltz
But the actual wedding ceremony--that, at all events, would represent
the poetry of life, its nascent, its just opening flower? He pictured
himself leading Olga to the altar. On her head there would be a
wreath of orange-blossoms, and to her gown a long train, and the crowd
would whisper in amazement. Shyly, and with gently heaving bosom and
brow bent forward in gracious pride, she would give him her hand in
complete unconsciousness that the eyes of all were fixed upon her.
Then a bright smile would show itself on her face, the tears would
begin to well, and for a moment or two the furrow on her forehead
would twitch with thought. Then, when they had arrived home and the
guests had all departed, she, yes, she--clad still in her gorgeous
raiment--would throw herself upon his breast as she had done that
morning!
Unable any longer to keep his fancies to himself, he went with them to
Olga. She listened to him with a smile; but when he jumped up with
the intention of informing also her aunt she frowned with such
decision that he halted in awe.
"Not a word to any one!" she said. "The right moment is not yet
come."
"What ought we to do first, then?
"To go to the registrar, and to sign the record."
"And then?"
"After marriage to go and live at Oblomovka, and to see what can be
done there."
"We shall not be able to do that, for the house is in ruins, and a new
one must first be built."
"Then where are we to live?"
"We must take a flat in town."
"Then you had better go at once and see about it."
"Alas!" was Oblomov's reflection. "Olga wishes for ever to be on the
move. Apparently she cares nothing about dreaming over the poetical
phases of life, or losing herself in reveries. She is like Schtoltz.
It would seem as though the two had conspired to live life at top
speed."
[arshins:] Ells.
Part 3 Chapter 2
LATE that August rain set in, and, one day, Oblomov saw a vanload of
the Ilyinskis' furniture come past his windows. To remain in his
country villa, now that the park was desolate and the shutters hung
closed over the Ilyinskis' windows, seemed to him impossible. At
length he removed to the rooms which had been recommended him by
Tarantiev, until such time as he should be able to find for himself a
new flat. He took hasty meals at restaurants, and spent most of his
evenings with Olga.
But the long autumn evenings in town were not like the long, bright
days amid fields and woods.
Here he could not visit Olga three times a day, nor send her notes by
Zakhar, seeing that she was five versts away. Thus the posied poem of
the late summer seemed somehow to have halted, or to be moving more
slowly, as though it contained less substance than of yore.
Sometimes they would keep silence for quite half an hour at a time,
while she busied herself with her needlework, and he busied himself in
a chaos of thoughts which ranged beyond the immediate present. Only
at intervals would he gaze at her and tremble with passion; only at
intervals would she throw him a fleeting glance, and smile as she
caught the rays of tender humility, of silent happiness, which his
eyes conveyed.
Yet on the sixth day, when Olga invited him to meet her at a certain
shop, and to escort her homeward on foot, he found his position begin
to grow a trifle awkward.
"Oh, if you knew how difficult things are!" he said. She returned no
answer, but sighed. On another occasion she said to him--"Until we
have arranged everything we cannot possibly tell my aunt. Nor must we
see so much of one another. You had better come to dinner only on
Sundays and Wednesdays. Also, we might meet at the theatre
occasionally, if I first give you notice that we are going to be
there. Also, as soon as a fine day should occur I mean to go for a
walk in the Summer Gardens, and you might come to meet me. The scene
will remind us of our park in the country." She added this last with a
quiver of emotion.
He kissed her hand in silence, and parted from her until Sunday. She
followed him with her eyes--then sat down to immerse herself in a wave
of sound at the piano. But something in her was weeping, and the
notes seemed to be weeping in sympathy. She tried to sing, but no
song would come.
A few days later, Oblomov was lolling on the sofa and playing with one
of his slippers--now picking it up from the floor with his toe, now
dropping it again. To him entered Zakhar.
"What now?" asked Oblomov indifferently. Zakhar said nothing, but
eyed him with a sidelong glance.
"Well?" said Oblomov again.
"Have you yet found for yourself another flat?" Zakhar countered.
"No, not yet. Why should you want to know?"
"Because I suppose the wedding will be taking place soon after
Christmas."
"The wedding? What wedding?" Oblomov suddenly leaped up.
"You know what wedding--your own," replied Zakhar with assurance, as
though he were speaking of an event long since arranged for. "You are
going to be married, are you not?"
"I to be married? To whom?" And Oblomov glared at the valet.
"To Mademoiselle Ilyinski--" Almost before the man could finish his
words Oblomov had darted forward.
"Who put that idea into your head?" he cried in a carefully suppressed
voice.
"The Lord bless us all and protect us!" Zakhar ejaculated, backing
towards the door. "Who told me about it? Why, the Ilyinskis'
servants, this very summer."
"Rubbish!" hissed Oblomov as he shook a warning finger at the old man.
"Remember--henceforth let me hear not a word about it!" He pointed to
the door, and Zakhar left the room--filling the flat with his sighs as
he did so.
Somehow Oblomov could not recover his composure, but remained gazing
at the spot which Zakhar had just vacated. Then he clasped his hands
behind his head, and re-seated himself in the arm-chair.
"So the servants' hall and the kitchen are talking!" was his insistent
reflection. " It has come to this, that Zakhar can actually dare to
ask me when the wedding is to be! Yes, and that though even Olga's
aunt has not an inkling of the truth! What would she think of it if
she knew? The wedding, that most poetical moment in the life of a
lover, that crown of all his happiness--why, lacqueys and grooms are
talking of it even though nothing is yet decided upon! No answer has
come from the estate, my registry certificate is a blank, and a new
flat still remains to be found."
With that he fell to analysing that poetical phase from which the
colour had faded with Zakhar's mention of the same. Oblomov was
beginning to see the other face of the medal. He tossed and turned
from side to side, lay flat on his back, leaped up and took a stride
or two, and ended by sinking back into a reclining position.
"How come folk to know about it?" he reflected. "Olga has kept
silence, and I too have breathed not a word. So much for stolen
meetings at dawn and sunset, for passionate glances, for the wizardry
of song! Ah, those poems of love! Never do they end save in
disaster. One should go beneath the wedding canopy before one
attempts to swim in an atmosphere of roses. To think that before any
preparations have been made--before even an answer has come from the
estate, or I have obtained either money or a flat--I should have to go
to her aunt, and to say: 'This is my betrothed!' At all costs must I
put a stop to these rumours. Marriage! What is marriage?"
He smiled as he remembered his recent poetical idealization of the
ceremony--the long train to the gown, the orange-blossoms, the
whispers of the crowd. Somehow the colours had now changed; the crowd
now comprised also the uncouth, the slovenly Zakhar and the whole
staff of the Ilyinskis' servants' hall. Also, he could see a long
line of carriages and a sea of strange, coldly inquisitive faces. The
scene was replete with glimmering, deadly weariness.
Summoning Zakhar to his presence, he again asked him how he had dared
to spread such rumours.
"For do you know what marriage means?" he demanded of his valet. "It
means that a lot of idle lacqueys and women and children start
chattering in kitchens and shops and the market-place. A given
individual ceases to be known as Ilya Ilyitch or Peter Petrovitch, and
henceforth ranks only as the zhenich. Yesterday no one would have
noticed him, but by to-morrow every one will be staring at him as
though he were a notorious rascal. Neither at the theatre nor in the
street will folk let him pass without whispering, 'Here comes the
zhenich'. And every day other folk will call upon him with their
faces reduced to an even greater state of imbecility than
distinguishes yours at this moment--all in order that they may vie
with one another in saying imbecile things. That is how such an
affair begins. And early each morning the zhenich must go to see his
betrothed in lemon-coloured gloves--never at any time may he look
untidy or weary; and always he must eat and drink what is customary
under the circumstances, in order that his sustenance may appear to
comprise principally bouquets and air. That is the programme which is
supposed to continue fully for three or four months! How could I go
through such an ordeal? Meanwhile you, Zakhar, would have had to run
backwards and forwards between my place and my betrothed's, as well as
to keep making a round of the tailors', the bootmakers', and the
cabinetmakers' establishments, owing to the fact that I myself could
not have been in every spot at once. And soon the whole town would
have come to hear of it. 'Have you yet heard the news? Oblomov is
going to be married!' 'Really? To whom? And what is she like? And
when is the ceremony to be?' Talk, talk, talk! Besides, how could I
have afforded the necessary expenses? You know how much money I
possess. Have I yet found another flat? And am I not owing a
thousand roubles for this one? And would not the hire of fresh
quarters have cost me three thousand roubles more, considering the
extra rooms which would have been required? And would there not have
been the cost of a carriage, and of a cook, and so forth? How could I
possibly have paid for it all?"
Oblomov checked himself abruptly. He felt horrified to think of the
threatening, the uncomfortable, vision which his imagination had
conjured up. The roses, the orange-blossoms, the glitter and show,
the whispers of the crowd--all these had faded into the background.
His fond dreams, his peace of mind alike were gone. He could not eat
or sleep, and everything had assumed an air of gloom and despondency.
In seeking to overawe Zakhar, he had ended by frightening also
himself, for he had stumbled upon the practical view of marriage, and
come to perceive that, despite nuptial poetry, marriage constitutes an
official, a very real step towards a serious assumption of new and
insistent obligations. Unable, therefore, to make up his mind as to
what he should say to Olga when he next met her, he decided to defer
his visit until the following Wednesday. Having arrived at this
decision, he felt easier.
Two days later, Zakhar entered the room with a letter from Olga.
"I cannot wait until Wednesday," she wrote. "I feel so lost through
these long absences from your side that I shall look to see you in the
Summer Gardens at three o'clock to-morrow."
"I cannot go," he thought to himself. The next moment he comforted
himself with the reflection that very likely her aunt, or some other
lady, would be with her; in which case he would have a chance of
concealing his nervousness.
Scarcely had he reached the Gardens when he saw her approaching. She
was veiled, and at first he did not recognize her.
"How glad I am that you have come!" she exclaimed. "I was afraid you
would not do so."
She pressed his hand, and looked at him with an air so frank, so full
of joy at having stolen this moment from Fate, that he felt envious of
her, and regretful that he could not share in her lighthearted mood.
Her whole face bespoke a childish confidence in the future, in her
happiness, and in him. Truly she was very charming!
"But why do you look so gloomy?" suddenly she exclaimed. "Why do you
say nothing? I had thought you would be overjoyed to see me, whereas
I find you gone to sleep again! Wake up, sir!"
"I am both well and happy," he hastened to say--fearful lest things
should attain the point of her guessing what was really in his mind.
"But I am disturbed that you should have come alone."
"Rather, it is for me to be disturbed about that," she retorted. "Do
you think I ought to have brought my aunt with me?"
"Yes, Olga."
"Then, if I had known that, I would have invited her to come,"
offendedly she said as she withdrew her hand from his. "Until now I
had imagined that your greatest happiness in life was to be with me,
and with me alone. Let us go for a row in a boat."
With that she set off towards the river, dragging his unwilling form
behind her.
"Are you coming to our house to-morrow?" she inquired when they were
safely settled in their seats.
"My God!" he reflected. "Already she has divined my thoughts, and
knows that I do not want to come!"
"Yes, yes," he answered aloud.
"In the morning, and for the whole day?"
"Yes."
She splashed his face playfully with water.
"How bright and cheerful everything looks!" she remarked as she gazed
about her. "Let us come again to-morrow. This time I shall come
straight from home."
"Then you have not come straight from home to-day?"
"No, but from a shop, from a jeweller's."
Oblomov looked alarmed.
"Suppose your aunt were to find out?" he suggested.
"Oh, suppose the Neva were to become dried up, and that this boat were
to overturn, and that our house were suddenly to fall down, and
that--that you were suddenly to lose your love for me?" As she spoke
she splashed him again.
"Listen, Olga," he said when they had landed on the bank. "At the
risk of vexing and offending you, I ought to tell you something."
"What is it?" Her tone was impatient.
"That we ought not to be indulging in these secret meetings."
"But we are betrothed to one another?"
"Yes, dearest Olga," he replied, pressing her hands, "and therefore we
are bound to be all the more careful. I would rather be walking with
you along this avenue publicly than by stealth--I would rather see the
eyes of passers-by drop respectfully before you than run the risk of
incurring a suspicion that you have so far forgotten your modesty and
your upbringing as to lose your head and fail in your duty."
"But I have not forgotten my modesty and my upbringing," she
exclaimed, withdrawing her hands.
"No, I know that you have not," he agreed. "I was merely thinking of
what people might say--of how the world in general might look upon it
all. Pray do not misunderstand me. What I desire is that to the
world you should seem to be as pure, as irreproachable, as in actual
fact you are. To me your conduct seems solely honourable and modest;
but would every one believe it to be so?"
"What you say is right," she said after a pause. "Consequently, let
us tell my aunt to-morrow, and obtain her consent."
Oblomov turned pale. "Why hurry so?" he asked. "I know that, two
weeks ago, I myself was urging haste; but at that time I had not
thought of the necessary preparations."
"Then your heart is failing you? That I can see clearly."
"No; I am merely cautious. Even now I see a carriage approaching us.
Are you sure that the people in it are not acquaintances of yours?
How these things throw one into a fever of perspiration! Let us
depart as quickly as possible." And with that he set off, almost at a
run.
"Until to-morrow, then," she said.
"No, until the day after to-morrow. That would be better. Or even
until Friday or Saturday."
"No, no; you must come to-morrow. Do you hear? What have we not come
to! What a mountain of sorrow are you not threatening to bring upon
my head!"
She turned to go home.
[Summer Gardens:] A public park in Petrograd.
[zhenich:] Bridegroom-to-be.
Part 3 Chapter 3
ON arriving at his rooms again, Oblomov never noticed that Zakhar gave
him a cold dinner, or that, after it, he rolled into bed and slept
heavily and insensibly, like a stone. Next day he received a letter
in which Olga said that she had spent the whole night weeping.
"She has been unable to sleep!" he thought to himself. "Poor angel!
Why does she care for me so much? And why am I so fond of her? Would
we had never met! It is all Schtoltz's fault. He shed love over us
as he might have shed a disease. What sort of a life is this?
Nothing but anxiety and emotion! How can it ever lead to peaceful
happiness and rest?"
Sighing deeply, he threw himself upon the sofa--then rose again, and
went out into the street, as though seeking the normal existence which
pursues a daily, gradual course of contemplation of nature, and
constitutes a series of calm, scarcely perceptible phenomena of family
life. Of existence as a spacious, a turbulent, a billowing river, as
Schtoltz always conceived it to be, he could form no conception
whatever.
He wrote to Olga that he had taken a slight chill in the Summer
Gardens--wherefore he must stay at home for a couple of days; but that
he hoped soon to be better, and to see her on the following Sunday.
In reply she wrote that he must take the greatest care of himself;
that even on Sunday he must not come should he not be well enough; and
that a whole week's separation would be bearable to her if thereby he
were enabled to avoid risking his health. This excuse for omitting
the Sunday visit Oblomov gladly seized upon; wherefore he sent back
word that, as a matter of fact, a few days' additional convalescence
would be no more than prudent.
Day succeeded day throughout the week. He read, he walked about the
streets, and, occasionally, he looked in upon his landlady for the
purpose of exchanging a couple of words and drinking some of her
excellent coffee. So comfortable did she make him that he even
thought of giving her a book to read; but when he did so she merely
read the headings of a chapter or two, and then returned him the
volume, saying that later she would get her little girl to read the
work to her.
Meanwhile Olga received unexpected news. This was to the effect that
a lawsuit with regard to her property had ended in her favour, and
that within a month's time she would be able, should she wish, to
enter into actual possession. But of this, and of her other plans for
the future, she decided not to tell Oblomov, but to spend the present
hour in dreams of the happiness that was to be hers and his when she
had seen love complete its revolution in his apathetic soul, and the
slothfulness fall from his shoulders.
That very day he was to come. Yet three o'clock arrived--four
o'clock--and no Oblomov. By half-past five the beauty and the
freshness of her features had begun to fade. Insensibly her form
assumed a drooping posture, and as she sat at the table her face was
pale. Yet no one noticed this. The rest of the guests consumed the
dishes which she had prepared for him alone, and carried on a
desultory, indifferent chatter of conversation. Until ten o'clock she
vacillated between hope and despair. Then, on the arrival of that
hour, she withdrew to her room. At first she showered upon his head
all the resentment that was seething within her. Not a word of
mordant sarcasm in her vocabulary would she not have devoted to his
punishing, had he been present. But after a while her mind passed
from fierceness to a thought which chilled it like ice.
"He is sick," was that thought. "He is lonely and ill, and unable
even to write."
So much did the idea gain upon her that she passed a sleepless night,
and rose pale, quiet, and determined. The same morning--it was
Monday--the landlady informed Oblomov that a visitor desired to see
him.
"To see me? Surely not?" he exclaimed. "Where is she?"
"Outside. Shall I send her away?"
Oblomov was about to assent when Olga's maid, Katia, entered the room.
Oblomov changed countenance. "How come you to be here?" he asked.
"My mistress is outside," she replied, "and has sent me in to bid you
go to her." There was no help for it, so he went out, and found Olga
alone.
"Are you quite well?" she exclaimed. "What has been the matter with
you?" With that they entered his study.
"I am better now--the sore throat is almost gone," he replied; and as
he spoke he touched the part mentioned, and coughed slightly.
"Then why did you not come last night?" She raked him with a glance so
keen that for the moment he found himself tongue-tied.
"And why have you taken such a step as this?" he countered. "Surely
you know what you are doing?"
"Never mind," she retorted impatiently. "I do not believe you have
been ill at all."
"No--I have not," he confessed.
"You have been deceiving me? Why so?"
"I will explain later. Important reasons have kept me away from you
for a fortnight."
"What are they?"
I--I am afraid of scandal, of people's tongues."
"And not of the fact that possibly I might pass sleepless nights--that
possibly I might be so anxious as to be unable to rest?"
"You cannot think what is passing within me," he said, pointing to his
head, and then to his heart. "I am all on edge, all on fire."
With that he told her what Zakhar had said to him, and ended with a
statement that, like herself, he could not sleep, and that in every
glance he saw a question, or a sneer, or a veiled hint at the
relations which might be existing between her and himself.
"Let us decide to tell my aunt this week," she replied, "and at once
this chatter will cease. Had I not known you so well, I should
scarcely have been able to understand the fact that you can be afraid
of servants' gossip, yet not of making me anxious. Really I cannot
understand you."
"Listen," presently she went on. "There is more in this than meets
the eye. Tell me all that is in your mind. What does it mean?"
He looked at her--then kissed her hand and sighed.
"What have you been doing during the past week or so?" she persisted
as she glanced round the room. "What a wretched place you have got!
The windows are small, and the curtains dirty. Where are your other
rooms?"
He hastened to show her them, in the hope that he might divert her
mind from the question of his late doings; but she only repeated the
question.
"I have been reading," he replied, "and writing, and thinking of you."
"Have you yet read my books?" she inquired. "Where are they? I will
take them back with me."
One of them happened to be lying on the table. She looked at the page
at which it was open, and saw that the page was covered with dust.
"You have not read them!" she exclaimed.
"No," he confessed.
Once more she looked at the mess and disorder in the room, and then
inquired:
"Then what have you been doing? You have neither been writing nor
reading."
"No; I have not had time to do so. In this place, as soon as one
rises, the rooms need to be swept, and other interruptions occur
afterwards. Next, when dinner is over--"
"When dinner is over you need to go to sleep."
So positive in its assurance was her tone that after a moment's
hesitation he replied that her conjecture was correct.
"Why do you do that?"
"In order to pass the time. You are not here with me, Olga, and life
is wearisome and unbearable without you."
Her gaze became so stern that he broke off abruptly.
"Listen, Ilya," she said very gravely. "Do you remember saying in the
park that at length your life had been fired to flame, and that you
believed me to be the aim, the ideal, of your life?"
"How should I not remember it, seeing that it has revolutionized my
whole existence? Cannot you see how happy I am?"
"No, I do not see it," she replied coldly. "Not only have you
deceived me, but also you are letting yourself relapse into your
former ways."
"Deceived you? I swear to God that, were that so, I would leap into
the pit of Hell!"
"Yes,--if the pit of Hell were just beneath your feet; but, were you
to put off doing so, even for a day or two, you would straightway
change your mind, and become nervous about the deed--more especially
should Zakhar and the rest begin gossiping on the subject! That is
not love."
"Ah, you have no idea how these cares and distractions have injured my
health!" he exclaimed. "Ever since I have known you, nothing but
anxiety has been my lot. Yet deprivation of you would cause me to die
or to go out of my mind. Only through you can I breathe or feel or
see. Is it, then, wonderful that, when you are not with me, I fall
ill? Without you everything is wearisome and distasteful. I feel
like a machine, I walk and act without knowing ever what I am doing.
Yes, I am like a machine whereof only you are the fuel, the motive
power. . . ."
When she had gone he trod the floor as on air. "How clearly she sees
life!" he reflected. "How unerringly from that book of wisdom is she
able to divine her road!" Yes, his life and hers had been bound to
come together like two rivers, for she, and only she, was his true
guide and instructor.
Next day there arrived a letter from the lawyer on his estate. He
read it throughÄ then let it slip from his fingers to the ground. The
gist of the document was that his property was greatly involved, and
that, if he wished matters to be set in order, he must hasten to take
up his residence on the spot.
"Then marriage is not to be thought of for at least another year," he
reflected with dismay. "First of all I shall need to complete my
plans for the estate, and then to consult an architect, and then, and
then--" He broke off with a sigh.
Part 3 Chapter 4
"ARE you certain that nothing remains to you of your property--that
there is no hope of anything?" asked Olga a few days later.
"Yes, I am certain," he replied--then added with a touch of hesitation
in his tone: "But perhaps within a year or so--"
"Within a year or so you may be able to order your life and your
affairs? Reflect a moment."
He sighed, for he was fighting a battle with himself, and the battle
was reflected in his face.
"Listen," she went on. "Remember that you and I are no longer
children, and that we are not jesting, and that the matter may affect
our whole lives. Inquire sternly of your conscience, therefore, and
tell me (for I know you, as well as trust you) whether you can stand
by me your life long, and be to me all that I need? You know me as I
know you: consequently you understand what it is that I am trying to
say. Should you return me a bold, a considered 'Yes,' I will cancel a
certain decision of mine--I will give you my hand, and together we
will go abroad, or to your estate, or to the Veaborg Quarter."
"Ah, if you knew how much I love you!" he began.
"I desire no protestations of love--only a brief answer."
"Do not torture me, Olga," he cried with weariness in his tone.
"Then am I right in what I suppose?" she asked.
"Yes--you are right," was the firm, but significant, reply.
There followed a long pause.
"Shall I tell you what you would have done had we married?" at length
she said. "Day by day you would have relapsed farther and farther
into your slough. And I? You see what I am--that I am not yet grown
old, and that I shall never cease to live. But you would have taken
to waiting for Christmas, and then for Shrovetide, and to attending
evening parties, and to dancing, and to thinking of nothing at all.
You would have retired to rest each night with a sigh of thankfulness
that the day had passed so quickly; and each morning you would have
awakened with a prayer that to-day might be exactly as yesterday.
That would have been our future. Is it not so? Meanwhile I should
have been fading away. Do you really think that in such a life you
would have been happy?"
He tried to rise and leave the room, but his feet refused their
office. He tried to say something, but his throat seemed dry, and no
sound would come. All he could do was to stretch out his hand.
"Forgive me!" he murmured.
She too tried to speak, but could not. She too tried to extend her
hand, but it fell back. Finally, her face contracted painfully, and,
sinking forward upon his shoulder, she burst into a storm of sobbing.
It was as though all her weapons had slipped from her grasp, and once
more she was just a woman--a woman defenceless in her fight with
sorrow.
"Good-bye, good-bye!" she said amid her spasms of weeping. He sat
listening painfully to her sobs, but felt as though he could say
nothing to check them. Sinking into a chair, and burying her face in
her handkerchief, she wept bitter, burning tears, with her head bowed
upon the table.
"Olga," at length he said, "why torture yourself in this way? You
love me, and could never survive a parting. Take me, therefore, as I
am, and love in me just so much as may be worthy of it."
Without raising her head, she made a gesture of refusal.
"No, no," she forced herself to gasp. "Nor need you fear for me and
my grief. I know myself. I am merely weeping my heart out, and shall
then weep no more. Do not hinder me, but go. God has punished me.
Yet how it hurts, how it hurts!"
Her sobs redoubled.
"But suppose the pain should not pass?" he said. "Suppose it should
wreck your health? Tears like these are tears of poison. Olga,
darling, do not weep. Forget the past."
"No, no; let me weep. I am weeping not so much for the future as for
the past." She could scarcely utter the words. "It was all so
bright--but now it is gone! It is not I that am weeping; it is my
memory--my memory of the summer, of the park--that is pouring out its
grief. Do you remember those things? Yes, I am yearning for the
avenue, and for the lilac that you gave me . . . They had struck
their roots into my heart, and--and the plucking of them up is painful
indeed!"
In her despair she bowed her head, and sobbed again--repeating: "Oh,
how it hurts! Oh, how it hurts!"
"But suppose you were to die of this?" he said in sudden alarm.
"Olga, Olga! Think a moment!"
"No, no," she interrupted, raising her head, and striving to look at
him through her tears. "Not long ago I realized that I was loving in
you only what I wished you to contain--that it was only the future
Oblomov of my dreams--it was so dear to me. Ilya, you are good and
honourable and tender; but you are all this only as is a dove which,
with its head hidden under its wing, wishes to see nothing better.
All your life you would have sat perched beneath the eaves. But I am
different--I wish for more than that; though what it is I wish for
even I myself could scarcely say. On the other hand, do you think
that you could have taught me what that something is, that you could
have supplied me with what I lack, that you could have given me all
that I--?"
Oblomov's legs were tottering under him. Sinking into a chair, he
wiped his hands and forehead with his handkerchief. The words had
been harsh--they had stung him to the quick. Somehow, too, they had
seared him inwardly, while outwardly they had chilled him as with a
breath of frost. No more could he do than smile the sort of pitiful,
deprecating smile which may be seen on the face of a beggar who is
being rated for his sorry clothing--the sort of smile which says: "I
am poor and naked and hungry. Beat me, therefore--beat me."
Suddenly Olga realized the sting which her words had contained, and
threw herself impetuously upon him.
"Forgive me, my friend," she said tenderly and with tears in her
voice. "I did not think what I was saying, for I am almost beside
myself. Yes, forget all that has happened, and let us be as
formerly--let all remain unchanged."
"No," he replied, as abruptly he rose to his feet and checked her
outburst with a decisive gesture. "All cannot remain unchanged. Nor
need you regret that you have told me the truth. I have well deserved
it."
She burst into a renewed fit of weeping.
"Go!" she said, twisting her tear-soaked handkerchief in her hands.
"I cannot bear this any longer. To me at least the past is dear."
She covered her face, and the sobs poured forth afresh.
"Why has everything thus come to rack and ruin?" she cried. "Who has
put a curse upon you, Ilya? Why have you done this? You are clever
and kind and good and noble; yet you can wreck our lives in this way!
What nameless evil has undone you?"
"It has a name," he said almost inaudibly. She looked at him
questioningly with tear-filled eyes. "That name," he added, "is 'The
Disease of Oblomovka.'"
Turning with bowed head, he departed.
Whither he wandered, or what he did, he never afterwards knew. Late
at night he returned home. His landlady, hearing his knock, awoke
Zakhar, who undressed his master, and wrapped him in the old
dressing-gown.
"How comes that to be here?" asked Oblomov, glancing at the garment.
"I was given it by the landlady to-day," replied Zakhar. "She has
just cleaned and mended it."
Sinking into an arm-chair, Oblomov remained there. All around was
growing dim and dreamlike. As he sat there with his head resting on
his hand he neither remarked the dimness nor heard the striking of the
hours. All his mind was plunged in a chaos of formless, indefinite
thoughts which, like the clouds in the sky, passed aimlessly,
disconnectedly athwart the surface of his brain. Of none of them
could he catch the actual substance. His heart felt crushed, and for
the moment the life in it was in abeyance. Mechanically he gazed in
front of him without even noticing that day was breaking, or that his
landlady's dry cough was once more audible, or that the dvornik was
beginning to cut firewood in the courtyard, or that the usual clatter
in the house had begun again. At length he went to bed, and fell into
a leaden, an uncomfortable sleep . . . .
"To-day is Sunday," whispered the kindly voice of the landlady, "and I
have baked you a pie. Will you not have some?"
He returned no answer, for he was in a high fever.
Part 4 Chapter 1
FOR many a day after his illness Oblomov's mood was one of dull and
painful despondency; but gradually this became replaced with a phase
of mute indifference, in which he would spend hours in watching the
snow fall and listening to the grinding of the landlady's coffee-mill,
to the barking of the housedogs as they rattled at their chains, to
the creaking of Zakhar's boots, and to the measured tick of the
clock's pendulum. As of old, Agafia Matvievna, his landlady, would
come and propose one or another dish for his delectation; also her
children would come running to and fro through his rooms. To the
landlady he returned kindly, indifferent answers, and to the
youngsters he gave lessons in reading and writing, while smiling
wearily, involuntarily at their playfulness. Little by little he
regained his former mode of life. One day Schtoltz walked into his
room.
"Well, Ilya?" he said, with a questioning sternness which caused
Oblomov to lower his eyes and remain silent.
"Then it is to be 'never'?" went on his friend.
"'Never'?" queried Oblomov.
"Yes. Do you not remember my saying to you, 'Now or never'?"
"I do," the other returned. "But I am not the man I then was. I have
now set my affairs in order, and my plans for improving my estate are
nearly finished, and I write regularly for two journals, and I have
read all the books which you left behind you."
"But why have you never come to join me abroad?" asked Schtoltz.
"Something prevented me."
"Olga?"
Oblomov gathered animation at the question.
"Where is she?" he exclaimed. "I heard that she had gone abroad with
her aunt--that she went there soon after, after--"
"Soon after she had recognized her mistake," concluded Schtoltz.
"You know the story, then?" said Oblomov, scarcely able to conceal his
confusion.
"Yes, the whole of it--even to the point of the sprig of lilac. Do
you not feel ashamed of yourself, Ilya? Does it not hurt you? Are
you not consumed with regret and remorse?"
"Yes; please do not remind me of it," interrupted Oblomov hurriedly.
"So great was my agony when I perceived the gulf set between us that I
fell ill of a fever. Ah, Schtoltz, if you love me, do not torture me,
do not mention her name. Long ago I pointed out to her her mistake,
but she would not listen to me. Indeed I am not so much to blame."
"I am not blaming you," said Schtoltz gently; "for I have read your
letter. It is I that am most to blame--then she--then you least of
all."
"How is she now?"
"How is she? She is in great distress. She weeps, and will not be
comforted."
Mingled anguish, sympathy, and alarm showed themselves on Oblomov's
features.
"What?" he cried, rising to his feet. "Come, Schtoltz! We must go to
her at once, in order that I may beg her pardon on my knees."
Schtoltz thought it well to change his tactics.
"Do you sit still," he said with a laugh. "I have not been telling
you the exact truth. As a matter of fact, she is well and happy, and
bids me give you her greeting. Also, she wanted to write to you, but
I dissuaded her on the ground that it would only cause you pain."
"Thank God for that!" cried Oblomov, almost with tears of joy. "Oh, I
am so glad, Schtoltz! Pray let me embrace you, and then let us drink
to her happiness!"
"But why are you hidden away in this corner?" asked Schtoltz after a
pause.
"Because it is quiet here--there is no one to disturb me."
"I suppose so," retorted Schtoltz. " In fact, you have here--well,
Oblomovka over again, only worse." He glanced about him. "And how are
you now?"
"I am not very well. My breathing is bad, and spots persist in
floating before my eyes. Sometimes, too, when I am asleep, some one
seems to come and strike me a blow upon the back and head, so that I
leap up with a start."
"Listen, Ilya," said Schtoltz gravely. "I tell you, in all
seriousness, that if you do not change your mode of life you will soon
be seized with dropsy or a stroke. As for your future, I have no
hopes of it at all. If Olga, that angel, could not bear you from your
swamp on her wings, neither shall I succeed in doing so. However, to
the end I shall stand by you: and when I say that, I am voicing not
only my own wish, but also that of Olga. For she desires you not to
perish utterly, not to be buried alive; she desires that at least I
shall make an attempt to dig you from the tomb."
"Then she has not forgotten me?" cried Oblomov with emotion--adding:
"As though I were worthy of her remembrance!
"No, she has not forgotten you, and, I think, never will. Indeed, she
is not the sort of person to forget you. Some day you must go and pay
her a visit in the country."
"Yes, yes--but not now," urged Oblomov. "Even at this moment I--I--"
He pointed to his heart.
"What does it contain?" asked Schtoltz. "Love?"
"No, shame and sorrow. Ah, life, life!"
"What of it?"
"It disturbs me--it allows me no rest."
"Were it to do so, the flame of your candle would soon go out, and you
would find yourself in darkness. Ah, Ilya, Ilya! Life passes too
swiftly for it to be spent in slumber. Would, rather, it were a
perpetual fire!--that one could live for hundreds and hundreds of
years! Then what an immensity of work would one not do!"
"You and I are of different types," said Oblomov. "You have wings;
you do not merely exist--you also fly. You have gifts and ambition;
you do not grow fat; specks do not dance before your eyes; and the
back of your neck does not need to be periodically scratched. In
short, my organism and yours are wholly dissimilar."
"Fie, fie! Man was created to order his own being, and even to change
his own nature; yet, instead, he goes and develops a paunch, and then
supposes that nature has laid upon him that burden. Once upon a time
you too had wings. Now you have laid them aside."
"Where are they?" asked Oblomov. "I am powerless, completely
powerless."
"Rather, you are determined to be powerless. Even during your boyhood
at Oblomovka, and amid the circle of your aunts and nurses and valets,
you had begun to waste your intellect, and to be unable to put on your
own socks, and so forth. Hence your present inability to live."
"All that may be so," said Oblomov with a sigh; "but now it is too
late to turn back."
"And what am I to say to Olga on my return?"
Oblomov hung his head in sad and silent meditation.
"Say nothing," at length he said. "Or say that you have not seen me.
. . ."
A year and a half later Oblomov was sitting in his dull, murky rooms.
He had now grown corpulent, and from his eyes ennui peered forth like
a disease. At intervals, too, he would rise and pace the room, then
lie down again, then take a book from the table, read a few lines of
it, yawn, and begin drumming with his fingers upon the table's
surface. As for Zakhar, he was more seedy and untidy than ever. The
elbows of his coat were patched, and he had about him a pinched and
hungry air, as though his appetite were bad, his sleep poor, and his
work three times as much as it ought to have been. Oblomov's
dressing-gown also was patched: yet, carefully though the holes had
been mended, the seams were coming apart in various places. Likewise
the coverlet of the bed was ragged, while the curtains, though clean,
were faded and hanging in strips.
Suddenly the landlady entered to announce a visitor, and also to say
that it was neither Tarantiev nor Alexiev.
"Then it must be Schtoltz again!" thought Oblomov, with a sense of
horror. "What can he want with me? However, it does not matter."
"How are you?" inquired Schtoltz when he entered the room. "You have
grown stout, yet your face is pale."
"Yes, I am not well," agreed Oblomov. "Somehow my left leg has lost
all feeling." Schtoltz threw at him a keen glance, and then eyed the
dressing-gown, the curtains, and the coverlet.
"Never mind," said Oblomov confusedly. "You know that never at any
time do I keep my place tidy. But how is Olga?"
"She has not forgotten you. Possibly you will end by forgetting her?"
"No, never! Never could I forget the time when I was really alive and
living in Paradise. Where is she, then?"
"In the country."
"With her aunt?"
"Yes--and also with her husband."
"So she is married? Has she been married long? And is she happy?"
Oblomov had quite sloughed his lethargy. "I feel as though you had
removed a great burden from my mind. True, when you were last here,
you assured me that she had forgiven me; but all this time I have been
unable to rest for the gnawing at my heart. . . . Tell me who the
fortunate man is?"
"Who he is? " repeated Schtoltz. "Why, cannot you guess, Ilya!"
Oblomov's gaze grew more intent, and for a moment or two his features
stiffened, and every vestige of colour left his cheeks.
"Surely it is not yourself? " he asked abruptly.
"It is. I married her last year."
The agitation faded from Oblomov's expression, and gave place to his
usual apathetic moodiness. For a moment or two he did not raise his
eyes; but when he did so they were full of kindly tears.
"Dear Schtoltz!" he cried, embracing his friend. "And dear Olga! May
God bless you both! How pleased I am! Pray tell her so."
"I will tell her that in all the world there exists not my friend
Oblomov's equal." Schtoltz was profoundly moved.
"No, tell her, rather, that I was fated to meet her, in order that I
might set her on the right road. Tell her also that I bless both that
meeting and the road which she has now taken. To think that that road
might have been different! As it is, I have nothing to blush for, and
nothing of which to repent. You have relieved my soul of a great
burden, and all within it is bright. I thank you, I thank you!"
"I will tell her what you have said," replied Schtoltz. "She has
indeed reason for never forgetting you, for you would have been worthy
of her--yes, worthy of her, you who have a heart as deep as the sea.
You must come and visit us in the country."
"No," replied the other. "It is not that I am afraid of witnessing
your married happiness, or of becoming jealous of her love for you.
Yet I will not come."
"Then of what are you afraid?"
"Of growing envious of you. In your happiness I should see, as in a
mirror, my own bitter, broken life. Yet no life but this do I wish,
or have it in my power, to live. Do not, therefore, disturb it.
Memories are the height of poetry only when they are memories of
happiness. When they graze wounds over which scars have formed they
become an aching pain. Let us speak of something else. Let me thank
you for all the care and attention which you have devoted to my
affairs. Yet never can I properly requite you. Seek, rather,
requital in your own heart, and in your happiness with Olga Sergievna.
Likewise, forgive me for having failed to relieve you of your duties
with regard to Oblomovka. It is my fixed intention to go there before
long."
"You will find great changes occurred in the place. Doubtless you
have read the statements of accounts which I have sent you?"
Oblomov remained silent.
"What? You have not read them?" exclaimed Schtoltz, aghast. "Then
where are they?"
"I do not know. Wait a little, and I will look for them after
dinner."
"Ah, Ilya, Ilya! Scarcely do I know whether to laugh or to weep."
"Never mind. We will attend to the affair after dinner. First let us
eat."
During the meal Oblomov bestowed high encomiums upon his landlady's
cooking.
"She looks after everything," he said. "Never will you see me either
with unmended socks or with a shirt turned inside out. She supervises
every detail."
He ate and drank with great gusto--so much so that Schtoltz
contemplated him with amazement.
"Drink, dear friend, drink," said Oblomov. "This is splendid vodka.
Even Olga could not make vodka or patties or mushroom stews equal to
these. They are like what we used to have at Oblomovka. No man could
be better looked after by a woman than I am by my landlady, Agafia
Matvievna. Nevertheless I, I--" He hesitated.
"Well, what? " prompted Schtoltz.
"I owe her ten thousand roubles on note of hand."
"Ten thousand roubles? To your landlady? For board and lodging?"
gasped Schtoltz, horrified.
"Yes. You see, the sum has gone on accumulating, for I live
generously, and the debt includes accounts for peaches, pineapples,
and so forth."
"Ilya," said Schtoltz, "what is this woman to you?"
The other made no reply.
"She is robbing him," thought his friend. "She is wheedling his all
out of him. Such things are everyday occurrences, yet I had not
guessed it."
Desirous of taking Oblomov away with him, he nevertheless found all
his efforts in that direction ineffectual.
"I ask you once again," he said. "In what relation do you stand to
your landlady?"
Again Oblomov reddened.
"Why are you desirous of knowing?" he countered.
"Because, on the score of our old friendship, I think it my duty to
give you a very serious warning indeed."
"A warning against what?"
"A warning against a pit into which you may fall. Now I must be
going. I will tell Olga that we may expect to see you this summer,
whether at our place or at Oblomovka."
Then Schtoltz departed.
Not for some years did he visit the capital again, for Olga's health
necessitated a lengthy sojourn in the Crimea. For some reason or
other her recovery after the birth of a child had been slow.
"How happy I am!" was her frequent reflection. Yet, no sooner had she
passed her life in admiring review than she would find herself
relapsing into a meditative mood. What a curious person she was!--a
person who, in proportion as her felicity became more complete,
plunged ever deeper and deeper into a brooding over the past! Delving
into the recesses of her own mind, she began to realize that this
peaceful existence, this halting at various stages of felicity,
annoyed her. However, with an effort of will she shook her soul clear
of this despondency, and quickened her steps through life in a
feverish desire to seek noise and movement and occupation. Yet the
bustle of society brought her small relief, and she would retire again
into her corner--there to rid her spirit of the unwonted sense of
depression. Then she would go out once more, and busy herself with
petty household cares which confined her to the nursery and the'
duties of a nurse and a mother, or join her husband in reading and
discussing serious books or poetry. Her main fear was lest she should
fall ill of the disease, the apathetic malady, of Oblomovka. Yet, for
all her efforts to slough these phases of torpor and of spiritual
coma, a dream of happiness other than the present used to steal upon
her, and wrap her in a haze of inertia, and cause her whole being to
halt, as for a rest from the exertions of life. Again, to this mood
there would succeed a phase of torture and weariness and
apprehension--a phase of dull sorrowfulness which kept asking itself
dim, indefinite questions and ceaselessly pondering upon them. And as
she listened to those questions she would examine herself, yet never
discover what it was she yearned for, nor why, at times, she seemed to
tire of her comfortable existence, to demand of it new and unfamiliar
impressions, and to be gazing ahead in search of something.
"What does it all mean?" she would say to herself with a shudder. "Is
there really anything more that I require, or that I need wish for?
Whither am I travelling? I have no farther to go--my journey is
ended. Yet have I really completed my cycle of existence? Is this
really all--all?" Then she would glance timidly around her, and
wonder, in doubt and trembling, what such whispers of the soul might
portend. With anxious eyes she would scan the earth, the heavens, and
the wilds, yet find therein no answer, but merely gloom, profundity,
and remoteness. All nature seemed to be saying the same thing; in
nature she could perceive only a ceaseless, uniform current of life to
which there was neither a beginning nor an ending. Of course, she
knew whom she could consult concerning these tremors--she knew who
could return the needed answers to her questionings. But what would
those answers import? What if Schtoltz should say that her
self-questionings represented the murmurings of an unsympathetic, an
unwomanly, heart--that his quondam idol possessed but a blasé,
dissatisfied soul from which nothing good was to be looked for? Yes,
how greatly she might fall in his estimation, were he to discover
these new and unwonted pangs of hers! Consequently, whenever, in
spite of her best efforts to conceal the fact, her eyes lost their
velvety softness, and acquired a dry and feverish glitter; whenever,
too, a heavy cloud overspread her face, and she could not force
herself to smile, and to talk, and to listen indifferently to the
latest news in the political world, or to descriptions of interesting
phenomena in some new walk of learning, or to remarks upon some new
creation of art--well, then she hid herself away, on the plea of
illness.
Yet she felt no desire to give way to tears; she experienced none of
those sudden alarms which had been hers during the period when her
girlish nerves had been excited even to the point of self-expression.
So if, while resting on some calm, beautiful evening, there came
stealing upon her, even amid her husband's talk and caresses, a
feeling of weariness and indifference to everything, she would merely
ask herself despairingly what it all meant. At one moment she would
become, as it were, turned to stone, and sit silent; at another she
would make feverish attempts to conceal her strange malady. Finally a
headache would supervene, and she would retire to rest. Yet all the
while it was a difficult matter for her to evade the keen eyes of her
husband. This she knew well, and therefore prepared herself for
conversation with him as nervously as she would have done for
confession to a priest.
Part 4 Chapter 2
ONE evening she and Schtoltz were pacing the poplar avenue in their
garden. She was suffering from her usual inexplicable lack of energy,
and finding herself able to return but the briefest of answers to what
he said.
"By the way," he remarked, "the nurse tells me that Olinka is troubled
with a night cough. Ought we not to send for the doctor to-morrow?"
"No. I have given her some hot medicine, and am going to keep her
indoors for the present," answered Olga dully.
In silence they walked to the end of the avenue.
"Why have you sent no reply to that letter from your friend Sonichka?"
he inquired. "This is the third letter that you have left
unanswered."
"I would rather forget her altogether," was Olga's brief rejoinder.
"Then you are not well?" he continued after a pause.
"Oh yes; nothing is the matter with me. Why should you think
otherwise?"
"Then you are ennuyée?"
She clasped her hands upon his shoulder. "No," she said, in a tone of
assumed cheerfulnessÄyet a tone in which the note of ennui was only
too plainly apparent.
He led her clear of the shade of the trees, and turned her face to the
moonlight.
"Look at me," he commanded. He gazed intently into her eyes.
"One would say that you were unhappy," he commented. "Your eyes have
a strange expression in them which I have noticed more than once
before. What is the matter with you, Olga?"
She took him by the sleeve and drew him back into the shade.
"Are you aware," she said with forced gaiety, "that I am hungry for
supper?"
"No, no," he protested. "Do not make a jest of this."
"Unhappy, indeed?" she said reproachfully, halting in front of him.
"Yes, I am unhappy--but only from excess of happiness." So tender was
her tone, and so caressing the note in her voice, that he bent down
and kissed her.
With that she grew bolder. The jesting supposition that she could be
unhappy inspired her to greater frankness.
"No, I am not ennuyée," she went on; "nor should I ever be so. You
know that well, yet you refuse. to believe my words. Nor am I ill.
It is merely that, that--well, that sometimes a feeling of depression
comes over me. You are a difficult man to conceal things from.
Sometimes I feel depressed, though I could not say why."
She laid her head upon his shoulder.
"Nevertheless, what is the reason of it?" he asked her gently as he
bent over her.
"I do not know," she repeated.
"Yet there must be a reason of some sort. If that reason lies neither
in me nor in your surroundings, it must lie in yourself. Sometimes
such depression is a symptom of ill-health. Are you sure that you are
quite well?"
"At all events I feel so," she replied gravely. "See for yourself how
I eat and walk and sleep and work! Yet every now and then there comes
over me a mood in which life seems to me incomplete. . . . Do not
mind this, however. It is nothing--nothing at all."
"Tell me more," he urged. "Certainly life is incomplete, but what
would you add to it?"
"And sometimes," she continued, "I grow afraid lest everything should
be about to be changed, or to come to an end; while at other times I
find myself torturing my brain with a stupid wondering as to what more
is to be expected from the future. This happiness of ours, this life,
with its joys and sorrows"--she had dropped her voice to a whisper, in
a sort of shame at her own questionings--"I know to be quite natural;
yet something seems still to be drawing me onwards, and to be making
me dissatisfied with my lot. How ashamed I feel of my folly and
fancifulness! But do not notice me: this despondency of mine will
soon pass away, and I shall once more become bright and cheerful."
She pressed herself closer with a timid caress, as though she were
asking pardon for what she termed her "folly." He questioned her as to
her symptoms as a physician might have done, and, in return, she
described to him her dull self-interrogations, her confusion of soul.
Meanwhile Schtoltz paced the avenue with his head on his breast and
his mind filled with doubt and anxiety--anxiety at the fact that he so
little understood his wife. At length she, in her turn, drew him into
the light of the moon, and gazed inquiringly into his eyes.
"What are you thinking of?" she asked bashfully. "Are you smiling at
my foolishness? Yes, 'tis very foolish, this despondency of mine. Do
you not think so?"
He made no reply.
"Why do you not speak?" she urged impatiently.
"You have long been keeping silence," he replied, "although always you
have known how solicitous I am on your account. Permit me, therefore,
to keep silence and reflect."
"Yet, if you do that, I shall feel uneasy. Never ought I to have
spoken out. Pray say something."
"What am I to say?" he asked meditatively. "It may be that a nervous
breakdown is hanging over you. Should that be so, the doctor, not I,
will have to decide how best you can be treated. I will send for him
to-morrow. In any case, if the mischief is not that, then--"
"Then what?" she queried, shaking his arm.
"It is over-imagination on your part. You are too full of life, and
have hitherto been maturing." He was speaking rather to himself than
to her.
"Pray utter your thoughts aloud, Andrei," she said beseechingly. "I
cannot bear it when you go muttering to yourself like that. I have
told you of my follies, and you merely bow your head and mumble
something into your beard. In this dark spot such conduct makes me
feel uncomfortable."
"I am at a loss what to say. You tell me, 'Depression comes over me,'
and 'I find myself troubled with disturbing questions.' What am I to
make of that? Let us speak on the subject again later, and in the
meanwhile consider matters. Possibly you require a course of
sea-bathing, or something of the kind."
"But you said to yourself: 'Hitherto you have been maturing.' What did
you mean by that?"
"I was thinking that, that--" He spoke slowly and hesitatingly, as
though he were distrustful of his own thoughts and ashamed of his own
words. "You see, there are moments when symptoms of this kind betoken
that, if a woman has nothing radically wrong with her health, she has
reached maturity--has arrived at the stage when life's growth becomes
arrested, and there remains for her no further problem to solve."
"Then you mean that I am growing old?" she interrupted sharply. "How
can you say that? I am still young and strong." And she drew herself
up as she spoke.
He smiled.
"Do not fear," he said. "You are not of the kind that will ever grow
old. True, in old age one's energies fail, and one ceases to battle
with life; but that is a very different thing. Provided it be what I
take it to be, your sense of depression and weariness is a sign of
vigour. Frequently the gropings of a vivid, excitable intellect
transcend the limits of everyday existence, and, finding no answer to
what that intellect demands of life, become converted into despondency
and a temporary dissatisfaction with life. The meaning of it is that
the soul is sorrowful at having to ask life its secret. Perhaps such
is the case with you. If so, you need not term it folly."
She sighed, but, apparently, with relief at the thought that the
danger was over, and that she had not fallen in her husband's
estimation.
"I am quite happy," she repeated, "nor do I spend my time in dreaming,
nor is my life monotonous. What more, then, is there for me to have?
What do these questionings portend? They harass me like a sickness."
"They are a spur to encourage a weak, groping intellect which has
lacked full preparation. True, such depression and self-questionings
have caused many to lose their senses; but to others they seem mere
formless visions, a mere fever of the brain."
"To think that just when one's happiness is full to overflowing, and
one is thoroughly in love with life, there should come upon one a
taint of sorrow!" she murmured.
"Yes; such is the payment exacted for the Promethean fire. You must
not only endure, you must even love and respect, the sorrow and the
doubts and the self-questionings of which you have spoken: for they
constitute the excess, the luxury, of life, and show themselves most
when happiness is at its zenith, and has alloyed with it no gross
desires. Such troubles are powerless to spring to birth amid life
which is ordinary and everyday; they cannot touch the individual who
is forced to endure hardship and want. That is why the bulk of the
crowd goes on its way without ever experiencing the cloud of doubt,
the pain of self-questioning. To him or to her, however, who
voluntarily goes to meet those difficulties they become welcome
guests, not a scourge."
"But one can never get even with them. To almost every one they bring
sorrow and indifference."
"Yes; but that does not last. Later they serve to shed light upon
life, for they lead one to the edge of the abyss whence there is no
return--then gently force one to turn once more and look upon life.
Thus they seem to challenge one's tried faculties in order that the
latter may be prevented from sinking wholly into inertia."
"And to think, also, that one should be disturbed by phantoms at all!"
she lamented. "When all is bright, one's life suddenly becomes
overshadowed with some sinister influence. Is there no resource
against it?"
"Yes, there is one. That resource lies in life itself. Without such
phantoms and such questionings life would soon become a wearisome
business."
"Then what ought I to do? To submit to them, and to wear out my
heart?"
"No," he replied. "Rather, arm yourself with resolution, and
patiently, but firmly, pursue your way." With that he embraced her
tenderly. "You and I are not Titans; it is not for us to join the
Manfreds and the Fausts of this world in going out to do battle with
rebellious problems. Rather, let us decline the challenge of such
difficulties, bow our heads, and quietly live through the juncture
until such time as life shall have come to smile again, and happiness
be once more ours."
"But suppose they decline to pass us by? Will not our doubts and
fears continue to increase?"
"No; for we shall accept them as a new verse in life's poem. In this
case, however, there is no fear of that. Your trouble is not peculiar
to you alone; it is an infectious malady common to all humanity, of
which a touch has visited you with the rest. Invariably does a human
being feel lost when he or she first breaks away from life and finds
no support in place of it. May God send that in the present instance
this mood of yours be what I believe it to be, and not a forerunner of
some bodily illness. That would be worse, for it would be the one
thing before which I should be nerveless and destitute of weapons.
Surely that cloud, that depression, those doubts, those
self-questionings of yours, are not going to deprive us of our
happiness, of our--?"
He did not complete his question, for, before he could do so, she had
flung herself upon him in a frantic embrace.
"Nothing shall ever do that!" she murmured in an access of renewed joy
and confidence. "No, neither doubts nor sorrow nor sickness! No, nor
yet--nor yet death itself!" Never had she seemed to love him as she
did at that moment.
"Take care that Fate does not overhear what you have whispered," he
interposed with a superstitious caution born of tender forethought for
her. "Yes, take care that it does not rate you ungrateful, for it
likes to have its gifts appreciated at their true worth. Hitherto you
have been learning only about life: now you are going also to
experience it. Soon, as life pursues its course, there will come to
you fresh sorrows and travail; and, together, they will force you to
look beyond the questions of which you have spoken, and therefore you
must husband your strength."
Schtoltz uttered these words softly, and almost as though he were
speaking to himself. And in the words was a note of despondency which
seemed to say that already he could see approaching her "sorrows" and
"travail."
She said nothing--she was too deeply struck with the mournful
foreboding in his tone. Yet she trusted him implicitly--his voice
alone inspired in her belief; and for that very reason his gravity
affected her deeply, and concentrated her thoughts upon herself.
Leaning upon him, she paced the avenue slowly and mechanically, with
her soul awed to a silence which she could not break. Following her
husband's eyes, she was gazing forward at the vista of life, and
trying to discern the point where, according to his words, "sorrows
and travail" were awaiting her. And as she did so she saw arise
before her a vision in which there became revealed to her a sphere of
life that was no longer to be bright and leisured and protected, that
was no longer to be passed amid plenty, that was no longer to be spent
alone with him. In that sphere she could descry only a long sequence
of losses and privations, with copious tears, strict asceticism,
involuntary renunciation of whims born of hours of ease, and new and
unwonted sensations which should call forth from her cries of pain and
disappointment. Yes, in that vision she saw before her only sickness,
material ruin, the loss of her husband, and . . .
Shuddering and faltering, she, with a man's courageous curiosity,
continued to gaze at this unfamiliar presentment of life, and timidly
to review and to estimate her ability to cope with it. Only love, she
saw, would never fail her--only love would over this new existence
keep ever-faithful watch and ward. Yet it would be love of a
different kind. From it there would be absent all ardent sighs and
shining days and rapturous nights; as the years went on such things
would come to seem children's sport compared with the non-intimate
affection which life, now grown profound and menacing, would cause her
to adopt for her guide. From that life came to her ears no sound of
laughter and kisses and tremulous, soulful intercourse amid groves and
flowers, while life and nature kept high holiday. No, such things
were "withered and gone." The love beheld in that vision was a love
which, unfading and indestructible, expressed itself on the features
of husband and wife only during seasons of mutual sorrow, and shone
forth only in slow, silent glances of mutual sympathy, and voiced
itself only in a constant, joint endurance of the trials of life as he
and she restrained the tears, and choked back the sobs, which those
trials called forth. With that there came stealing into the midst of
the doubts and fears which beset her other visions--visions remote but
clear, inspiring but definite. . . .
. . . . . .
Her husband's calm, assured reasoning, added to her own implicit
confidence in him, helped Olga to succeed in shaking off both her
enigmatical, singular misgivings and her visionary, menacing dreams
concerning the future. Once more, therefore, she strode boldly
forward. To the night of doubt there succeeded a brilliant morning of
maternal and housewifely duties. On the one hand, there beckoned to
her the flower garden and the meadows on the other hand there beckoned
to her her husband's study. No longer did she play with life as with
a means of carefree indulgence. Rather, life had become a season of
mysterious, systematic waiting, and of getting ready.
Yet once, when Schtoltz happened to mention Oblomov's name, she let
fall her sewing, and sank into a reverie.
"What of him?" later she asked. "Could we not find out how he is
through some of his friends?"
"Even so, we should find out no more than we know already.
Independently of his friends, I happen to be aware that he is alive
and well, and living in the same rooms as formerly. But how he is
spending his days, and whether he is morally dead or still there is
flickering in him a last spark of vitality, it is impossible for an
outsider to ascertain."
"Do not speak like that, Andrei," said Olga. "It hurts me to hear you
do so. Were I not afraid, I would go in person to glean news of him."
The tears had risen very near to her eyes.
"Next spring we ourselves shall be in Petrograd," he husband remarked.
"Then we will find out."
"But it is not sufficient merely to find out: we ought also to do all
we can for him."
"Already I have done what is possible. When one is with him he is
ready to take any steps desired; but directly one's back is turned he
relapses into slumber. 'Tis like trying to deal with a drunken man."
"Then why turn your back upon him ever? He ought to be treated
firmly--he ought to be removed from his rooms and taken away. Were I
to ask him, he would come with us into the country. I feel sure I
should never get over it if I were to see him sink to rack and ruin.
Perhaps my tears--"
"Might revive him, you think?"
"No, but at least compel him to look around him, and to exchange his
life for something better. With us he would be out of the mire, and
living among his equals."
"Surely you do not love him as you used to do?" Schtoltz asked
half-jestingly.
"No, I do not," she replied (and as she did so her grave eyes seemed
to be gazing back into the past). "Yet in him there is something for
which I have an abiding affection, and to which I shall ever remain
true."
"Shall I tell you what that something is?"
She nodded an assent.
"'Tis an honourable, trustworthy heart. That heart is the nugget
given him of Nature, and he has carried it unsullied through all his
life. Under life's stress he fell, lost his enthusiasm, and ended by
going to sleep--a broken, disenchanted man who had lost his power to
live, but not his purity and his intrinsic worth. Never a false note
has that heart sounded; never a particle of mire has there clung to
his soul; never a specious lie has he heeded; never to the false road
has he been seduced by any possible attraction. Even were a whole
ocean of evil and rascality to come seething about him, and even were
the whole world to become infected with poison and be turned upside
down, Oblomov would yet refuse to bow to the false image, and his soul
would remain as clean, as radiant, and as without spot as ever. That
soul is a soul of crystal transparency. Of men like him but few
exist, so that they shine amid the mob like pearls. No price could be
high enough to purchase his heart. Everywhere and always that heart
would remain true to its trust. It is to this element in him that you
have always remained true and it is owing to the same element in him
that my task of keeping watch will never become a burden. In my day I
have known many men with splendid qualities. Never have I known a man
cleaner, brighter, and more simple than Oblomov. For many a man have
I cherished an affection. Never for a man have I cherished an
affection more ardent and lasting than that which I cherish for
Oblomov. Once known, his personality is an entity for which one's
love could never die . . . . Is that so? Have I divined aright?"
She said nothing: her eyes were fixed intently upon her work. At
length she arose, ran to her husband, gazed into his eyes for a moment
as she embraced him, and let her head sink forward upon his shoulder.
During those few moments there had arisen to her memory Oblomov's
kindly, pensive face, his tender, deprecating gaze, and the shy,
wistful smile with which, at their last parting, he had met her
reproaches. As she saw those things her heart ached with pity.
"You will never abandon him--you will never let him leave your sight?"
she asked with her arms around her husband's neck.
"No, never I--not though an abyss should open between us, and a
dividing wall arise!"
She kissed him.
"Nor shall I ever forget the words which you have just spoken," she
murmured.
Part 4 Chapter 3
IN the Veaborg Quarter peace and quietness reigned supreme. They
reigned in its unwashed streets, with their wooden sidewalks, and in
its lean gardens amid the nettle-encumbered ditches, where a goat with
a ragged cord around its neck was diligently engaged in cropping the
herbage and snatching dull intervals of slumber. At midday, however,
the high, smart boots of a clerk clattered along a sidewalk, the
muslin curtain at a window was pulled aside to admit the features of a
Civil Service official's lady, and for a brief moment there showed
itself over a garden fence the fresh young face of a girl--then the
face of a companion--then the face which had first appeared, as two
maidens laughed and tittered during the process of swinging each other
on a garden swing.
Also in the abode of Oblomov's landlady all was quiet. Had you
entered the little courtyard, you would have happened upon an idyllic
scene. The poultry would have started running hither and thither in
fussy alarm, and the dogs given tongue in furious accents, while
Akulina would have paused in her pursuit of milking the cow, and the
dvornik in his task of chopping firewood, in order that they might
gaze unhampered at the visitor. "Whom do you wish to see?" the
dvornik would have inquired; and on your mentioning Oblomov's name, or
that of the mistress of the house, he would have pointed to the steps
of the front door, and then resumed his task of wood-chopping;
whereupon the visitor would have followed the neat, sanded path to the
steps (which he would have found covered with a plain, clean carpet of
some sort), and, reaching for the brightly polished knob of the
doorbell, would have had the door opened to him by Anisia, one of the
children, the landlady herself, or Zakhar. Everything in Agafia
Matvievna's establishment smacked of an opulence and a domestic
sufficiency which had been lacking in the days when she had shared
house with her brother, Tarantiev's bosom friend. The kitchen, the
lumberroom, and the pantry were alike fitted with cupboards full of
china, crockery, and household wares of every sort; while in cases
were set out Oblomov's plate and articles of silver (long ago
redeemed, and never since pledged). In short, the place abounded in
such commodities as are to be found in the abode of every frugal
housewife. Also, so carefully was everything packed in camphor and
other preservatives that when Agafia Matvievna went to open the doors
of the cupboards she could scarcely stand against the overwhelming
perfume of mingled narcotics which came forth, and had to turn her
head aside for a few moments. Hams hung from the ceiling of the
storeroom (to avoid damage by mice), and, with them, cheeses, loaves
of sugar, dried fish, and bags of nuts and preserved mushrooms. On a
table stood tubs of butter, pots of sour cream, baskets of apples, and
God knows what else besides, for it would require the pen of a second
Homer to describe in full, and in detail, all that had become
accumulated in the various corners and on the various floors of this
little nest of domestic life. As for the kitchen, it was a veritable
palladium of activity on the part of the mistress and her efficient
assistant, Anisia. Everything was kept indoors and in its proper
place; throughout there prevailed a system of orderliness and
cleanliness ; and only into one particular nook of the house did a ray
of light, a breath of air, the good housewife's eye, and the nimble,
all-furbishing hand of the domestic never penetrate. That nook was
Zakhar's den. Lacking a window, it was so constantly plunged in
darkness that its resemblance to a lair rather than to a human
habitation was rendered the more complete. Whenever Zakhar surprised
in his den the mistress of the house (come thither to plan a cleaning
or various improvements) he explained to her, in forcible terms, that
it was not a woman's business to sweep out a place where faggots,
blacking, and boots ought to lie, and that it mattered not a jot that
clothes should be tossed in a heap on the floor, or that the bed in
the stove corner had become overspread with dust, seeing that it was
he, and not she, whose function it was to repose upon that bed. As
for a besom, a few planks, a couple of bricks, the remains of a
barrel, and two blocks of wood which he always kept in his room, he
could not, he averred, get on in his domestic duties without them
(though why that was so he left to the imagination). Finally,
according to his own statement, neither the dust nor the cobwebs in
the least inconvenienced him--to which he begged to add a reminder
that, since he never obtruded his nose into the kitchen, he should be
the more pleased if he could be left alone by those to whom the
kitchen was at all times open. Once, when he surprised Anisia in his
sanctum, he threatened her so furiously with uplifted fist that the
case was referred to the court of superior instance--that is to say,
to Oblomov himself, who walked supinely to the door of the den,
inserted his head therein, scanned the apartment and its contents,
sneezed, and returned mutely to his own quarters.
"What have you gained by it all?" said Zakhar to the mistress and her
myrmidon, who had accompanied Oblomov, in the hope that his
participation in the affair would lead to a change of some sort. Then
the old valet laughed to himself in a way which twisted his eyebrows
and whiskers askew.
In the other rooms of the house, however, everything looked bright and
clean and fresh. The old stuff curtains had disappeared, and the
doors and windows of the drawing-room and the study were hung with
blue and green drapery and muslin curtains--the work of Agafia
Matvievna's own hands. Indeed, for days at a time Oblomov, prone upon
his sofa, had watched her bare elbows flicker to and fro as she plied
needle and thread; nor had he once gone to sleep to the sound of
thread being alternately inserted and bitten off, as had been his
custom in the old days at Oblomovka.
"Enough of work," he had nevertheless said to her at intervals, "Pray
cease your labours for a while."
"Nay," she had always replied, "God loves those who toil."
Nor was his coffee prepared for him with less care, attention, and
skill than had been the case before he had changed his old quarters
for his present ones. Giblet soup, macaroni with Parmesan cheese,
soup concocted of kvass and herbs, home-fed pullets--all these dishes
succeeded one another in regular rotation, and by so doing helped to
make agreeable breaks in the otherwise monotonous routine of the
little establishment. Nor did the sun, whenever shining, fail to
brighten his room from morning till night--thanks to the fact that the
market-gardens on either side of the building prevented that
luminary's rays from being shaded off by any obstacle. Outside, ducks
quacked cheerfully, while, within, a geranium, added to a few
hyacinths which the children had brought home, filled the little
apartment with a perfume which mingled pleasantly with the smoke of
Havana cigars and the scent of the cinnamon or the vanilla which the
mistress of the house would be preparing with bare, energetic arms.
Thus Oblomov lived in a sort of gilded cage--a cage within which, as
in a diorama, the only changes included alternations of day and night
and of the seasons. Of changes of the disturbing kind which stir up
the sediment from the bottom of life's bowl--a sediment only too
frequently both bitter and obnoxious--there were none. Ever since the
day when Schtoltz had cleared him of debt, and Tarantiev and
Tarantiev's friend had taken themselves off for good, every adverse
element had disappeared from Oblomov's existence, and there surrounded
him only good, kind, sensible folk who had agreed to underpin his
existence with theirs, and to help him not to notice it, nor to feel
it, as it pursued its even course. Everything was, as it were, at
peace, and of that peace, that inertia, Oblomov represented the
complete, the natural, embodiment and expression. After passing in
review and considering his mode of life, he had sunk deeper and deeper
therein, until finally he had come to the conclusion that he had no
farther to go, and nothing farther to seek, and that the ideal of his
life would best be preserved where he was--albeit without poetry,
without those finer shades wherewith his imagination had once painted
for him a spacious, careless course of manorial life on his own estate
and among his own peasantry and servants.
Upon his present mode of life he looked as a continuation of the
Oblomovkan existence (only with a different colouring of locality,
and, to a certain extent, of period). Here, as at Oblomovka, he had
succeeded in escaping life, in driving a bargain with it, and ensuring
to himself an inviolable seclusion. Inwardly he congratulated himself
on having left behind him the irksome, irritating demands and menaces
of mundane existence--on having placed a great distance between
himself and the horizon where there may be seen flashing the
lightning-bolts of keen pleasure, and whence come the thunder-peals of
sudden affliction, and where flicker the false hopes and the splendid
visions of average happiness, and where independence of thought
gradually engulfs and devours a man, and where passion slays him
outright, and where the intellect fails or triumphs, and where
humanity engages in constant warfare, and leaves the field of battle
in a state of exhaustion and of ever-unsatisfied, ever-insatiable
desire. Never having experienced the consolations to be won in
combat, he had none the less renounced them, and felt at ease only in
a remote corner to which action and fighting and the actual living of
life were alike strangers.
Yet moments there were when his imagination stirred within him again,
and when there recurred to his mind forgotten memories and unrealized
dreams, and when he felt in his conscience whispered reproaches for
having made of his life so little as he had done. And whenever that
occurred he slept restlessly, awoke at intervals, leaped out of bed,
and shed chill tears of hopelessness over the bright ideal that was
now extinguished for ever. He shed them as folk shed them over a dead
friend whom with bitter regret they recognize to have been neglected
during his lifetime. Then he would glance at his surroundings, hug to
himself his present blessings, and grow comforted on noting how
quietly, how restfully, the sun was rising amid a blaze of glory.
Thus he had come to a decision that not only was his life compounded
in the best manner for expressing the possibilities to which the
idealistic-peaceful side of human existence may attain, but also that
it had been expressly created for, and preordained to, that purpose.
To others, he reflected, let it fall to express life's restless
aspects ; to others let it be given to exercise forces of construction
and destruction; to each man be allotted his true métier.
Such the philosophy which our Plato of Oblomovka elaborated for the
purpose of lulling himself to sleep amid the problems and the stern
demands of duty and of destiny. He had been bred and nourished to
play the part, not of a gladiator in the arena but of a peaceful
onlooker at the struggle. Never could his diffident, lethargic spirit
have faced either the raptures or the blows of life. Hence he
expressed only one of its aspects, and had no mind either to succeed
in it, or to change anything in it, or to repent of his decision. As
the years flowed on both emotion and repining came to manifest
themselves at rarer and rarer intervals, until, by quiet,
imperceptible degrees, he became finally interned in the plain, otiose
tomb of retirement which he had fashioned with his own hands, even as
desert anchorites who have turned from the world dig for themselves a
material sepulchre. Of reorganizing his estate, and removing thither
with his household, he had given up all thought. The steward whom
Schtoltz had placed in charge of Oblomovka regularly sent him the
income therefrom, and the peasantry proffered him flour and poultry at
Christmastide, and everything on the estate was prospering.
Meanwhile he ate heartily and much, even as he had done at Oblomovka.
Also, he walked and worked sluggishly and little--again, as he had
done at Oblomovka. Lastly, in spite of his advancing years, he drank
beer and vodka à raisin with complete insouciance, and took to
sleeping ever more and more protractedly after dinner.
But suddenly a change occurred. One day, after his usual quota of
slumber and day dreams, he tried to rise from the sofa, but failed,
and his tongue refused to obey him. Terrified, he could compass only
a gesture when he tried to call for help. Had he been living with
Zakhar alone, he might have continued to signal for assistance until
next morning, or have died, and not been found there till the
following day; but, as it was, the eyes of his landlady had been
watching over him like the eyes of Providence itself, and it cost her
no skill of wit, but only an instinct of the heart, to divine that all
was not well with Oblomov. No sooner had the instinct dawned upon her
than Anisia was dispatched in a cab for a doctor, while Agafia
Matvievna herself applied ice to the patient's head, and extracted
from her medicine chest the whole armoury of smelling-bottles and
fomentations which custom and report had designated for use at such a
juncture. Even Zakhar managed to get one of his boots on, and, thus
shod, to fuss around his master in company with the doctor, the
mistress of the house, and Anisia.
At length, blood having been let, Oblomov returned to consciousness,
and was informed that he had just sustained an apoplectic stroke, and
that he must adopt a different course of life. Henceforth, vodka,
beer, wine, coffee, and rich food were, with certain exceptions, to be
prohibited, while in their place there were prescribed for him daily
exercise and a regular amount of sleep of an exclusively nocturnal
nature. Even then these remedies would have come to nothing but for
Agafia Matvievna's watchfulness; but she had the wit so to introduce
the system that the entire household involuntarily assisted in its
working. Thus, partly by cunning and partly by kindness, she
contrived to wean Oblomov from his attractive indulgences in wine,
postprandial slumber, and fish pasties. For instance, as soon as ever
he began to doze, either a chair would be upset in an adjoining room,
or, of its own volition, some old and worthless crockery would begin
flying into splinters, or the children would start making a noise, and
be told, fortissimo, to be gone. Lastly, should even this not prove
effective, her own kindly voice would be heard calling to him, in
order to ask him some question or another.
Also, the garden path was lengthened, and on it Oblomov accomplished,
morning and evening, a constitutional of some two hours' duration.
With him there would walk the landlady--or, if she could not attend,
one of the children, or his old friend, the irresponsible and to every
man both humble and agreeable Alexiev. One morning Oblomov, leaning
on the boy Vania's arm, slowly paced the path. By this time Vania had
grown into almost a youth, and found it hard to restrict his brisk,
rapid step to Oblomov's more tardy gait. As the elder man walked he
made little use of one of his legs, which was a trace of the stroke
which he had recently sustained.
"Let us go indoors now, Vaniushka," he said; wherefore they directed
their steps towards the door. But to meet them there issued Agafia
Matvievna.
"Why are you coming in so early?" she inquired.
"Early, indeed? Why, we have paced the path twenty times each way,
and from here to the fence is a distance of fifty sazhens; wherefore
we have covered two versts in all."
"And how many times do you say you have paced it?" she inquired of
Vania.
He hesitated.
"Do not lie, but look me straight in the face," she continued, fixing
him with her gaze. "I have been watching you the whole time.
Remember next Sunday. Possibly I might not let you go to the party
that night."
"Well, mother," the boy said at length, "we have paced the path only
twelve times."
"Ah, you rogue!" exclaimed Oblomov. "You were nipping off
acacia-leaves all the time, whereas I was keeping the most careful
account."
"Then you must go and do some more walking," decided the landlady.
"Besides, the fish soup is not yet ready." And she closed the door
upon the pair.
Oblomov, much against his will, completed another eight pacings of the
path, and then entered the dining-room. On the large round table the
fish soup was now steaming, and all hastened to take their usual
seats--Oblomov in solitary state on the sofa, the landlady on his
right, and the rest in due sequence.
"I will help you to this herring, as it is the fattest," said Agafia
Matvievna.
"Very well," he remarked. "Only, I think that a pie would go well
with it."
"Oh dear! I have forgotten the pies! I meant to make some last
night, but my memory is all gone to pieces!" The artful Agafia
Matvievna! "Besides, I am afraid that I have forgotten the cutlets
and the cabbage. In fact, you must not expect very much of a dinner
to-day." This was addressed ostensibly to Alexiev.
"Never mind," he replied. "I can eat anything."
"But why not cook him some pork and peas, or a beef-steak?" asked
Oblomov.
"I did go to the butcher's for a beefsteak, but there was not a single
morsel of good beef left. However, I have made Monsieur Alexiev a
cherry compôte instead. I know he likes that." The truth was that
cherry compôte was not bad for Oblomov wherefore the complacent
Alexiev had no choice but both to eat it and to like it.
After dinner no power on earth could prevent Oblomov from assuming a
recumbent position; so, to obviate his going to sleep, the landlady
was accustomed to place beside him his coffee, and then to inspire her
children to play games on the floor, so that, willy-nilly, Oblomov
should be forced to join in their sport. Presently she withdrew to
the kitchen to see if the coffee was yet ready, and, meanwhile, the
children's clatter died away. Almost at once a gentle snore arose in
the room--then a louder one--then one louder still; and when Agafia
Matvievna returned with the steaming coffee-pot she encountered such a
volume of snoring as would have done credit to a post-house.
Angrily she shook her head at Alexiev.
"It is not my fault," he said deprecatingly. "I tried to stir up the
children, but they would not listen to me."
Swiftly depositing the coffee-pot upon the table, she caught up little
Andriusha from the floor, and gently seated him upon the sofa by
Oblomov's side; whereupon the child wriggled towards him, climbed his
form until he had reached his face, and grasped him firmly by the
nose.
"Hi! Hullo! Who is that?" cried Oblomov uneasily as he opened his
eyes.
"You had gone to sleep, so Andriusha climbed on to the sofa and awoke
you," replied the landlady kindly.
"I had gone to sleep, indeed?" retorted Oblomov, laying his arm around
the little one. "Do you think I did not hear him creeping along on
all fours? Why, I hear everything. To think of the little rascal
catching me by the nose! I'll give it him! But there, there."
Tenderly embracing the child, he deposited him on the floor again, and
heaved a profound sigh. "Tell us the news, Ivan Alexiev," he said.
"You have heard it all. I have nothing more to tell."
"How so? You go into society, and I do not. Is there nothing new in
the political world?"
"It is being said that the earth is growing colder every day, and that
one day it will become frozen altogether."
"Away with you! Is that politics?"
A silence ensued. Oblomov quietly relapsed into a state of coma that
was neither sleeping nor waking. He merely let his thoughts wander at
will, without concentrating them upon anything in particular as calmly
he listened to the beating of his heart and occasionally blinked his
eyes. Thus he sank into a vague, enigmatical condition which partook
largely of the nature of hallucination. In rare instances there come
to a man fleeting moments of abstraction when he seems to be reliving
past stages of his life. Whether he has previously beheld in sleep
the phenomena which are passing before his vision, or whether he has
gone through a previous existence and has since forgotten it, we
cannot say; but at all events he can see the same persons around him
as were present in the first instance, and hear the same words as were
uttered then.
So was it with Oblomov now. Gradually there spread itself about him
the hush which he had known long ago. He could hear the beating of
the well-known pendulum, the snapping of the thread as it was bitten
off, and the repetition of familiar whispered sentences like "I cannot
make the thread go through the eye of the needle. Pray do it for me,
Masha--your eyesight is keener than mine."
Lazily, mechanically he looked into his landlady's face; and
straightway from the recesses of his memory there arose a picture
which, somewhere, had been well known to him.
To his vision there dawned the great, dark drawing-room in the house
of his youth, lit by a single candle. At the table his mother and her
guests were sitting over their needlework, while his father was
silently pacing up and down. Somehow the present and the past had
become fused and interchanged, so that, as the little Oblomov, he was
dreaming that at length he had reached the enchanted country where the
rivers run milk and honey, and bread can be obtained without toil, and
every one walks clad in gold and silver.
Once again he could hear the old legends and the old folk-tales,
mingled with the clatter of knives and crockery in the kitchen. Once
again he was pressing close to his nurse to listen to her tremulous,
old woman's voice. "That is Militrissa Kirbitievna," she was saying
as she pointed to the figure of his landlady. Also, the same clouds
seemed to be floating in the blue zenith that used to float there of
yore, and the same wind to be blowing in at the window, and ruffling
his hair, and the same cock of the Oblomovkan poultry-yard to be
strutting and crowing below. Suddenly a dog barked. Some other guest
must be arriving! Would it be old Schtoltz and his little boy from
Verklevo? Yes, probably, for to-day is a holiday. And in very truth
it is they--he can hear their footsteps approaching nearer and nearer!
The door opens, and "Andrei!" he exclaims excitedly, for there, sure
enough, stands his friend--but now grown to manhood, and no longer a
little boy! . . .
Part 4 Chapter 4
OBLOMOV recovered consciousness. Before him Schtoltz was
standing--but the Schtoltz of the present, not the Schtoltz of a
daydream.
Swiftly the landlady caught up the baby Andriusha, swept the table
clear of her work, and carried off the children. Alexiev also
disappeared, and Schtoltz and Oblomov found themselves alone. For a
moment or two they gazed at one another amid a tense silence.
"Is that really you, Schtoltz?" asked Oblomov in tones scarcely
audible for emotion--such tones as a man employs only towards his
dearest friend and after a long separation.
"Yes, it is I," replied Schtoltz quietly. "And you--are you quite
well?"
Oblomov embraced him heartily. In that embrace were expressed all the
long-concealed grief and joy which, fermenting ever in his soul, had
never, since Schtoltz's last departure, been expressed to any human
being. Then they seated themselves, and once more gazed at one
another.
"Are you really well?" Schtoltz asked again.
"Yes, thank God!" replied Oblomov.
"But you have been ill?"
"Yes--I was seized with a stroke."
"Ah, Ilya, Ilya! Evidently you have let yourself go again. What have
you been doing? Actually, it is five years since last we saw one
another!"
Oblomov sighed, but said nothing. "And why did you not come to
Oblomovka?" pursued Schtoltz. "And why have you never written to me?"
"What was there to say?" was Oblomov's sad reply. "You know me.
Consequently you need ask no more."
"So you are still living in these rooms?" And Schtoltz surveyed the
room as he spoke. "Why have you not moved?"
"Because I am still here. I do not think the move will ever take
place."
"Why are you so sure?"
"Because I am sure."
Again Schtoltz eyed him closely, then became thoughtful, and started
to pace the room.
"And what of Olga Sergievna?" was Oblomov's next question. "Where is
she now, and does she still remember me?" At this point he broke off
abruptly.
"Yes, she is well, and has of you a remembrance as clear as though she
had parted from you yesterday. Presently I will tell you where she
is."
"And your children?"
"The children too are well. But are you jesting when you say that you
are going to remain where you are? My express purpose in coming here
is to carry you off to our place in the country."
"No, no!" cried Oblomov, though lowering his voice as he glanced at
the door. Evidently the proposal had disturbed him greatly. "Do not
say a word about it," he pleaded. "Do not begin your arguments
again."
"But why will you not come? What is the matter with you? You know me
well, and know that long ago I undertook this task, and shall never
relinquish it. Hitherto business affairs have occupied my time, but
now I am free once more. Come and live with us, or, at all events,
near us. Olga and I have decided that you must do so. Thank God that
I have found you the same as before, and not worse! My hopes of doing
that had been small. Let us be off at once. I am prepared even to
abduct you by force. You must change your mode of life, as you well
know."
To this speech Oblomov listened with impatience.
"Do not speak so loudly," he urged. "In there--"
"Well--in there?"
"Is the landlady, and, should she hear us, she will think that I am
going to leave her."
"And why should you not leave her? Let her think what she likes!"
"Listen, Andrei." Oblomov's tone was one of unwonted firmness. "Do
not continue your useless attempts to persuade me. Come what may, I
must remain where I am."
Schtoltz gazed at his friend in astonishment, but Oblomov returned the
gaze with quiet resolution on his features.
"Remain here, and you are lost," said Schtoltz. "This house, that
woman, this way of living?--I tell you the thing cannot be. Let us
go."
He caught Oblomov by the sleeve, and started to drag him towards the
door.
"Why do you want to take me away?" asked Oblomov, hanging back.
"Because I want you to leave this den, this swamp, for the world of
light and air and health and normal existence." Schtoltz was speaking
sternly, and almost in a tone of command. "To what point have you
sunk?" he went on. "What is going to become of you? Think for a
moment. Are you so attached to this mode of life that you wish to go
to sleep like a mole in its burrow? Remember that--"
"I desire to remember nothing. Do not disturb the past. It can never
be brought back again." Into Oblomov's face there had come a full
consciousness of his power to think, to reason, and to will. "What is
it you wish me to do? From the world to which you would abduct me I
have parted for ever; and to solder together two pieces which have
started asunder is impossible. I have grown to look upon this nook as
my world. Should you uproot me from it, I shall die."
"But look at the place, at the people with whom you are living!"
"I know what you mean--I am perfectly conscious of the facts. Ah,
Andrei, believe me when I say that so well do I feel and understand
things that for many a day past I have been ashamed to show myself
abroad. Yet I cannot accompany you on your road. Even did I wish it,
such a course is out of my power. Possibly, when you were last here,
I might have made the attempt; but now"--here he dropped his eyes for
a moment and paused--"now it is too late. Go, and waste no further
time upon me. Your friendship, as God in heaven knows, I value; but
your disturbance of my peace I do not value."
"Nothing that you can say will turn me from my purpose. I intend to
carry you off, and the more so because I suspect certain things. Look
here. Put on a garment of some sort, and come and spend the evening
at my rooms. I have much to tell you, for I suppose you know what is
afoot at our place?"
Oblomov looked at him inquiringly.
"Ah, I had forgotten," Schtoltz went on. "You no longer go into
society. Well, come with me, and I will tell you the whole story.
Also, do you know who is waiting for me in a carriage at the gates? I
will go and call her in."
"What? Olga?" As the words burst tremulously from Oblomov's lips his
face underwent a sudden change. "For God's sake do not bring her
here! Go, go, for God's sake!"
But the elder man refused to move, although his friend half started to
push him towards the door.
"I cannot return to her without you," he said. "I have pledged my
word on that. If you will not come with me to-day, then you must come
to-morrow. You are merely putting me off for a time: you will never
put me off for ever. Even should it be the day after to-morrow, we
still shall meet again."
Oblomov said nothing, but hung his head as though afraid to meet
Schtoltz's eye.
"When are you coming, therefore?" went on Schtoltz. "Olga will be
sure to ask me when."
"Ah, Andrei," cried the other in a tone of affectionate appeal as he
embraced his friend and laid his head upon his shoulder, "Pray leave
me and--forget me."
"What? For ever?" cried Schtoltz in astonishment as he withdrew a
little from Oblomov's embrace in order the better to look him in the
face.
"Yes," whispered Oblomov.
Schtoltz stepped back a pace or two.
"Can this really be you, Ilya?" he exclaimed reproachfully. "Do you
really reject me in favour of that woman, of that landlady of yours?"
He started with a sudden pang. "So that child which I saw just now is
your child? Ah, Ilya, Ilya! Come hence at once. How you have
fallen! What is that woman to you?"
"She is my wife," said Oblomov simply.
Schtoltz stood petrified.
"Yes, and the child is my son," Oblomov continued. "He has been
called Andrei after yourself." Somehow he seemed to breathe more
freely now that he had got rid of the burden of these disclosures. As
for Schtoltz, his face fell, and he gazed around the room with vacant
eyes. A gulf had opened before him, a high wall had suddenly shot up,
and Oblomov seemed to have ceased to exist--he seemed to have vanished
from his friend's sight, and to have fallen headlong. The only
feeling in Schtoltz's mind was an aching sorrow of the kind which a
man experiences when, hastening to visit a friend after a long
parting, he finds that for many a day past that friend has been dead.
"You are lost!" he kept whispering mechanically. "What am I to say to
Olga?"
At length Oblomov caught the last words, and tried to say something,
but failed. All he could do was to extend his hands in Schtoltz's
direction. Silently, convulsively the pair embraced, even as before
death or a battle. In that embrace was left no room for words or
tears or expressions of feeling.
"Never forget my little Andrei," was Oblomov's last choking utterance.
Slowly and silently Schtoltz left the house. Slowly and silently he
crossed the courtyard and entered the carriage. When he had gone
Oblomov reseated himself upon the sofa in his room, rested his elbows
upon the table, and buried his face in his hands . . . .
"No, never will I forget your little Andrei," thought Schtoltz sadly
as he drove homewards. "Ah, Ilya, you are lost beyond recall! It
would be useless now to tell you that your Oblomovka is no longer in
ruins, that its turn is come again, and that it is basking in the rays
of the sun. It would be useless now to tell you that, some four years
hence, it will have a railway-station, and that your peasantry are
clearing away the rubbish there, and that before long an iron road
will be carrying your grain to the wharves, and that already local
schools have been built. Such a dawn of good fortune would merely
affright you; it would merely cause your unaccustomed eyes to smart.
Yet along the road which you could not tread I will lead your little
Andrei; and with him I will put into practice those theories whereof
you and I used to dream in the days of our youth. Farewell, Oblomovka
of the past! You have outlived your day!" For the last time Schtoltz
looked back at Oblomov's diminutive establishment.
"What do you say?" asked Olga with a beating heart.
"Nothing," Schtoltz answered dryly and abruptly.
"Is he alive and well?"
"Yes," came the reluctant reply.
"Then why have you returned so soon? Why did you not call me to the
house, or else bring him out to see me? Let me go back, please."
"No, you cannot."
"Why so? What has happened there? Will you not tell me?"
Schtoltz continued to say nothing.
"Again I ask you: what is the matter with him?"
"The disease of Oblomovka," was the grim response. And throughout the
rest of the journey homeward Schtoltz refused to answer a single one
of Olga's questions.
Part 4 Chapter 5
FIVE years have passed, and more than one change has taken place in
the Veaborg Quarter. The street which used to lead, unenclosed, to
Oblomov's humble abode is now lined with villas. In the midst of them
a tall stone Government office rears its head between the sunlight and
the windows of that quiet, peaceful little house which the sun's rays
once warmed so cheerfully.
The house itself has grown old and crazy: it wears a dull, neglected
look like that of a man who is unshaven and unwashed. In places the
paint has peeled away, and in others the gutters are broken. To the
latter is due the fact that pools of dirty water stand in the
courtyard, and that thrown across them is a piece of old planking.
Should a visitor approach the wicket, the old watchdog no longer leaps
nimbly to the extent of his chain, but gives tongue hoarsely and
lazily from the interior of his kennel.
And, within the house, what changes have taken place! Over it there
reigns a different housewife to the former one, and different children
sport in play. Again is seen about the premises the lean countenance
of Tarantiev, rather than the kindly, careless features of Alexiev;
while of Zakhar and Anisia also there is not a sign discernible. A
new cook performs, rudely and unwillingly, the quiet behests of Agafia
Matvievna, and our old friend Akulina--her apron girded around her
middle--washes up, as formerly, the domestic crockery and the pots and
pans. Lastly, the same old sleepy dvornik whiles away the same old
idle life in the same old den by the gates, and at a given hour each
morning, as well as always at the hour of the evening meal, there
flashes past the railings of the fence the figure of Agafia's brother,
clad, summer and winter alike, in galoshes, and always carrying under
his arm a large bundle of documents.
But what of Oblomov? Where is he--where? Under a modest urn in the
adjoining cemetery his body rests among the shrubs. All is quiet
where he is lying; only a lilac-tree, planted there by a loving hand,
waves its boughs to and fro over the grave as it mingles its scent
with the sweet, calm odour of wormwood. One would think that the
Angel of Peace himself were watching over the dead man's slumbers. .
. .
Despite his wife's ceaseless and devoted care for every moment of his
existence, the prolonged inertia, the unbroken stillness, the sluggish
gliding from day to day had ended by quietly arresting the machine of
life. Thus Oblomov met his end, to all appearances without pain,
without distress, even as stops a watch which its owner has forgotten
to wind up. No one witnessed his last moments or heard his expiring
gasp. A second stroke of apoplexy occurred within a year of the
first, and, like its precursor, passed away favourably. Later,
however, Oblomov became pale and weak, took to eating little and
seldom walking in the garden, and increased in moodiness and
taciturnity as the days went on. At times he would even burst into
tears, for he felt death drawing nearer, and was afraid of it. One or
two relapses occurred, from which he rallied, and then Agafia
Matvievna entered his room, one morning, to find him resting on his
deathbed as quietly as he had done in sleep--the only difference being
that his head had slipped a little from the pillow, and that one of
his hands was convulsively clutching the region of the heart in a
manner which suggested that the pain had there centred itself until
the circulation of the blood had stopped for ever.
After his death Agafia Matvievna's sister-in-law, Irina Paptelievna,
assumed control of the establishment. That is to say, she arrogated
to herself the right to rise late in the morning, to drink three cups
of coffee for breakfast, to change her dress three times a day, and to
confine her housewifely energies to seeing that her gowns were
starched to the utmost degree of stiffness. More she would not
trouble to undertake, and, as before, Agafia Matvievna remained the
active pendulum of the domestic clock. Not only did she superintend
the kitchen and the dining-room, and prepare tea and coffee for the
entire household, but also she did the general mending and supervised
the linen, the children, Akulina, and the dvornik.
Why was this? Was she not Madame Oblomov and the proprietress of a
landed estate? Might she not have maintained a separate, an
independent establishment, and have wanted for nothing, and have been
at no one's beck and call? What had led her to take upon her
shoulders the burden of another's housekeeping, the care of another's
children, and all those petty details which women usually assume only
at the call of love, or in obedience to sacred family ties, or for the
purpose of earning a morsel of daily bread? Where, too, were Zakhar
and Anisia--now become, by every right of law, her servants? Where,
too, was the little treasure, Andrei, which Oblomov had bequeathed
her? Where, finally, were her children by her first husband?
Those children were now all provided for. That is to say, Vania had
finished his schooling and entered Government service, his sister had
married the manager of a Government office, and little Andrei had been
committed to the care of Schtoltz and his wife, who looked upon him as
a member of their own family. Never for a moment did Agafia Matvievna
mentally compare his lot, or place it on a level with, that of her
first children--although, unconsciously it may be, she allotted them
all an equal place in her heart. In her opinion the little Andrei's
upbringing, mode of life, and future career stood divided by an
immeasurable gulf from the fortunes of Vania and his sister.
"What are they?" she would say to herself when she called to see
Andrei. "They are children born of the people, whereas this one was
born a young barin."
Then she would caress the boy, if not with actual timidity, at all
events with a certain touch of caution, and add to herself with
something like respect: "What a white skin he has! 'Tis almost
transparent. And what tiny hands and feet, too, and what silky hair!
He is just like his dead father." Consequently she was the more ready
to accede to Schtoltz's request when he asked her that he (Schtoltz)
should educate the youngster; since she felt sure that Schtoltz's
household was far more the lad's proper place than was her own
establishment, where he would have been thrown among her grimy young
nephews.
Clad in black, she would glide like a shadow from room to room of the
house--opening and shutting cupboards, sewing, making lace, but doing
everything quietly, and without the least sign of energy. When spoken
to, she would reply as though to do so were an effort. Moreover, her
eyes no longer glanced swiftly from object to object, as they had done
in the old days: rather, they remained fixed in a sort of ever
concentrated gaze. Probably they had assumed that gaze during the
hour when she had stood looking at her dead husband's face.
That the light of her life was fast flickering before going out, that
God had breathed His breath into her existence and taken it away
again, and that her sun had shone brilliantly and was setting for
ever, she clearly understood. Yes, that sun was setting for ever, but
not before she had learnt the reason why she had been given life, and
the fact that she had not lived in vain. Greatly she had loved, and
to the full: she had loved Oblomov as a lover, as a husband, and as a
barin. But around her there was no one to comprehend this; wherefore
she kept her grief the more closely locked in her own bosom.
Only, next winter, when Schtoltz came to town, she ran to see him, and
to gaze hungrily at little Andrei, whom she covered with caresses.
Presently she tried to say something--to thank Schtoltz, and to pour
out before him all that had been accumulating in her heart in the
absence of an outlet. Such words he would have understood perfectly,
had they been uttered. But the task was beyond her--she could only
throw herself upon Olga, glue her lips to her hand, and burst into
such a torrent of scalding tears that perforce Olga wept with her, and
Schtoltz, greatly moved, hastened from the room. All three had now a
common bond of sympathy--that bond being the memory of Oblomov's
unsullied soul. More than once Schtoltz and Olga besought the widow
to come and live with them in the country, but always she replied:
"Where I was born and have lived my live, there must I also die."
Likewise, when Schtoltz proposed to render her an account of his
management of the Oblomovkan property, she returned him the income
therefrom, with a request that he should lay it by for the benefit of
little Andrei.
"'Tis his, not mine," she said. "He is the barin, and I will continue
to live as I have always done.
Part 4 Chapter 6
ONE day, about noon, two gentlemen were walking along a pavement in
the Veaborg Quarter, while behind them a carriage quietly paced. One
of the gentlemen was Schtoltz, the other a literary friend of his--a
stout individual with an apathetic face and sleepy, meditative eyes.
As they drew level with a church, Mass had just ended, and the
congregation was pouring into the street. In front of them a knot of
beggars was collecting a rich and varied harvest.
"I wonder where these mendicants come from," said the literary
gentleman, glancing at the reapers.
"Out of sundry nooks and corners, I suppose," replied the other
carelessly.
"That is not what I meant. What I meant is, how have they descended
to their present position of beggars? Have they come to it suddenly
or gradually, for a good reason or for a bad one?"
"Why are you so anxious to know? Are you contemplating writing a
'Mysteries of Petrograd'?"
"Perhaps I am," the literary gentleman explained with an indolent
yawn.
"Then here is a chance for you. Ask any one of them, and, for the sum
of a rouble, he will sell you his story, which, jotted down, you could
resell to the nobility. For instance, take this old man here. He
looks a good example of the normal type. Hi, old man! We want you!"
The old man turned his head at the summons, doffed his cap, and
approached the two gentlemen.
"Good sirs," he whined, "pray help a poor man who has been wounded in
thirty battles and grown old in war."
"It is Zakhar!" exclaimed Schtoltz in astonishment. "It is you,
Zakhar, is it not?" But Zakhar said nothing. Then suddenly he shaded
his eyes from the sun, and, staring intently at Schtoltz,
muttered--"Pardon me, your Honour--I do not recognize you. I am
nearly blind."
"What? You have forgotten your old friend, the barin Schtoltz?" the
other asked reproachfully.
"Dear, dear! Is it really your Honour? My bad sight has got the
better of me."
Catching Schtoltz impetuously by the hand, the old man imprinted kiss
after kiss upon the skirt of his coat.
"The Lord Himself has permitted a poor lost wretch to see a joyful
day!" he said, half-laughing, half-crying. Over his face, and
particularly over his nose, there had spread a purplish tinge, while
his head was almost completely bald, and his whiskers, though still
long, looked so matted and entangled as to resemble pieces of felt
wherein snowballs have been wrapped. As for his clothing, it
consisted of an old, faded cloak, with one of the lapels missing, and
a pair of down-at-heel goloshes. In his hands was a cap from which
the fur had become worn away.
"Ah, good sir!" he repeated. "Heaven has indeed granted me joy for
to-day's festival!"
"But why are you in this state?" Schtoltz inquired. "Are you not
ashamed of yourself?"
"Yes, your Honour; but what else could I do?" And Zakhar heaved a
profound sigh. "How else was I to live? So long as Anisia was alive
I had not to go wandering about like this, for I was given bite and
sup whenever I wanted it; but she died of cholera (Heaven rest her
soul!), and her brother straightway refused to support me, saying that
I was nothing but an old hanger-on. From Michei Andreitch Tarantiev
too I received shameful abuse, and neither of them--would you believe
it, your Honour?--ever gave me a morsel of bread! Indeed, had it not
been for the barinia, God bless her"--and Zakhar crossed himself--"I
should long ago have perished of the cold; but for a while she gave me
a bit of clothing, and as much bread as I could eat, and a place by
the stove of a night. Then they took to rating her on my account; so
at last I left the house to wander whither my eyes might lead me.
This is the second year that I have been dragging out this miserable
existence."
"But why did you not go and seek a situation?" Schtoltz inquired.
"Where was I to get one at this time of day, your Honour? True, I
tried for two, but was unsuccessful. Things are not what they used to
be: everything has changed for the worse. Nowadays masters require
their lacqueys to look respectable, and the gentry no longer keep
their halls chock-full of footmen. Indeed, 'tis seldom that you will
find so many as two footmen in a house. Yes," he went on, "the gentry
actually take off their own boots! They have even gone so far as to
invent a machine to do it with!" Evidently the idea cut Zakhar to the
heart. "Yes," he repeated, "our gentry are a shame and a disgrace to
the country. They are fast coming to rack and ruin." A sigh of
profound regret followed.
"At one place," presently he resumed, "I did obtain a situation.
'Twas with a German merchant, who engaged me to be his hall lacquey.
After a while, however, he sent me to serve in the pantry. Now, was
that my proper business? One day I was carrying some crockery across
the room on a tray, and the floor happened to be smooth and slippery,
and down I fell, and the tray and the crockery with me. So I was
turned out of doors. Next, an old countess took a fancy to my looks.
'He is of respectable appearance,' she said to herself, and added me
to her staff of Swiss lacqueys. The post was a light one, and bid
fair to be permanent, too. All that I had to do was to sit as
solemnly as possible on a chair, to cross one leg over the other, and,
when any rascal called, not to answer him, but just to grunt and send
the fellow away--or else give him a box on the ear. Of course, to the
gentry one had to behave differently--just to wave one's staff like
this." Zakhar gave an illustration of what he meant. "As I say, 'twas
an easy job, and the lady, God bless her! was not over-difficult to
please. But one day she happened to peep into my room and to see
there a bug. With that she bristled up and shrieked as though it had
been I who had invented bugs! When was a household ever without a
bug? So the next time she passed me she pretended that I smelt of
liquor, and dismissed me."
"Yes, and you smell of it now--and very strongly," remarked Schtoltz.
"To my sorrow, I suppose so," whined Zakhar, wrinkling his brow
bitterly. "Well, then I tried to get a coachman's job, and took
service with a gentleman; but one day I had my feet frost-bitten (for
I was over-old and weak for the job), and another day the brute of a
horse fell down and nearly broke my ribs, and another day I ran over
an old woman and got taken to the police-station."
"Well, well! Instead of drinking and getting yourself into trouble,
come to my house, and I will give you a corner there until it is time
for us to return to the country. Do you hear?"
"Yes, your HonourÄyes; but, but--" Zakhar sighed again. "I would
rather not leave these parts. You see, the grave is here--the grave
where my old patron is lying." Zakhar sobbed. "Only to-day I have
been there to commend his soul to God. What a barin the Lord God has
taken from us! 'Twould have been good for us if he could have lived
another hundred years. Yes, only to-day I have been visiting his
grave. Whenever I am near the spot I go and sit beside it, and shed
tears--ah, such tears! And sometimes, too, when all is quiet there, I
seem to hear him calling to me once more, 'Zakhar! Zakhar!'--and
shivers go running down my back. Never lived there such a barin as
he! And how fond of yourself he was, your Honour! May the Lord
remember him when the heavenly kingdom shall come!"
"You ought to see our little Andrei," said Schtoltz. "If you like,
you can have charge of him." And he handed the old man some money.
"Yes, I will come! How could I not come when it is to see little
Andrei Ilyitch? By this time he must be grown into a tall young
gentleman. What joy the Lord has reserved for me this day! Yes, I
will come, your Honour, and may God send you good health and many a
long year of life!" But it was after a departing carriage that Zakhar
was dispatching his benedictions.
"Did you hear the old beggar's story?" Schtoltz asked of his
companion.
"Yes. Who was the Oblomov whom he mentioned?"
"He was--Oblomov. More than once I have spoken to you of him."
"Ah, I think I remember the name. Yes, he was a friend and comrade of
yours, was he not? What became of him?"
"He came to rack and ruin--though for no apparent reason." As he spoke
Schtoltz sighed heavily. Then he added: "His intellect was equal to
that of his fellows, his soul was as clear and as bright as glass, his
disposition was kindly, and he was a gentleman to the core. Yet
he--he fell."
"Wherefore? What was the cause?"
"The cause?" re-echoed Schtoltz. "The cause was--the disease of
Oblomovka."
"The disease of Oblomovka?" queried the literary gentleman in some
perplexity. " What is that?"
"Some day I will tell you. For the moment leave me to my thoughts and
memories. Hereafter you shall write them down, for they might prove
of value to some one."
In time Schtoltz related to his friend what herein is to be found
recorded.
THE END